San Francisco - Part 2

I've gathered up some more San Francisco pictures to share. I've been having so much fun with all the new photo editing capabilities in the new Picasa, I hope I don't get carried away! Collages. are. awesome.  Anyway, after we left Clear Lake last Thursday, we head down to San Francisco for the remainder of the trip. I love that city - correction, I love that city when I'm on foot.  Driving around there can be a real test on your patience, not to mention you  miss almost everything there is to see! Once we parked that car in the garage that's where we wanted to leave it for the next 3 days.  After settling into our home away from home, it was time to start exploring.  These Bromeliads caught my eye from about 40 feet away...

Wow! I'm a huge plant nerd, so seeing this many healthy & blooming Bromies was a real treat. This was in Embarcadero Plaza, which is one of those mid-century indoor outdoor malls that were so popular for a while there. It's actually underneath five enormous buildings (nice to work there!) and is full of shops, concrete, fountains and planter after planter of gorgeous flowers.  There used to be a few malls like this where I grew up in San Jose, but they all went the way of the strip mall.  This place was a gem, I'll need a full photo day there soon!

Chinatown was really close to where we stayed on Bush St. so of course we made a pit stop. Chinatown is neat, but it's very crowded and we hadn't had lunch yet - so we B-lined it to the ceramic shop we were craving. It's actually the basement of this place called "Canton Bazaar" on Grant, and it's full of beautiful Chinese and Japanese ceramics.  I really would love to have that set on the bottom of the collage!

We didn't want to get stuck in any one area for too long, so we decided that we should just walk and anytime we get hungry or just need a cocktail, we'd stop for only one thing.  This worked out great! We saw a lot more places this way because we would only stay for one appetizer, sandwich, or drink.  We found ourselves in North Beach, or Little Italy I guess.. and the deeper we got into that neighborhood the cuter it was.  I had no idea it was there, and over all the times I've been to San Francisco, I haven't once stumbled into this little zone.  So, of course, we wanted to have some food in Little Italy, right? So we had lunch in this little cafe, full of pastries and interesting sandwiches.  Let's see if this panorama works in bloggy format:

Eh, you may have to click to enlarge.  This was our view from our seat, totally open air.  That was really great, except, we later realized our receipt had a french name on it! So there we were, Little Italy.. eating in a French cafe.. oops! I couldn't believe it! I wondered why there wasn't a lot of prosciutto or salami's on the menu, but I was hungry and didn't put too much into it.  Oh well, just another reason to head back, right? For some actual Italian food in Little Italy!  We had a great time and walked probably a good 12 miles that day, felt great! I'll have more pictures of our roaming as they come in, aka as I get to them.  Have a great day!