some things worth waking up & waiting for

overcast days in san francisco. brunch. warm coffee on cold mornings. good friends. laughter. waitresses who somehow get gravy on their elbows. glimpses of cityscape.

new mercies each morning. a content heart. being satisfied with God’s way. the future.

city life

There is something to be said about train rides–not just how expensive they are now–and watching the respective scenes & cities go by.

Quite enjoyable.

18th street

Thursdays are my new San Francisco day. I didn’t want to squander such a rare, beautiful day in SF, so despite running on an literal empty gas tank, I decided to head over to the Mission to get a quick lunch and some Bi-rite. It probably wasn’t a good idea to circle the block a few times for parking, though. I seriously thought my car was going to break down on the way to Costco to get gas, so I drove under the speed limit… I’m crazy, I know.

Tartine for light lunch (& morning bun to go–saved to go with my coffee this morning), strolled by Bi-rite Market and envied their beautiful dahlias, and last stop at Bi-rite Creamery to pick up some ice cream for people.

Seriously, I love San Francisco.

officially summer…

…for three weeks for me.

I love not being in school or tied down to *real job for now.

Despite having to wake up for early for a long day tomorrow, I’m still up ‘cuz I decided to get coffee around 5pm–way past my usual caffeine cut-off of 3pm. You’d think for how much coffee&tea I drink, I’d have some sort of tolerance, but I don’t. I guess caffeine still serves its purpose somehow.

And at this point, I stayed up so long I’m hungry. Boo.

—

Coinciding with my beginning of summer was finally the beginning of beautiful, summer-like weather… at the end of May, no less, but I won’t complain about that because I can’t! Except that I got sick… but even then, I still can’t complain.

{I wish I weren’t so lazy about putting pictures into my posts, but wordpress makes it really difficult. Something makes me think there must be a way around it.}

A turned 23 last Tuesday. In some ways, it’s kind of frightening because 23 sounds a lot closer to 25 than 22 does. But then we laughed it off because I guess you could say that about any age–we concluded that turning 23 is almost like turning 100! And that’s me next…soon, anyway.

We did a late birthday celebration with a planned hike on Friday (he had the day off work , but quickly unraveled into explorations along Skyline. We stumbled upon the Pulgas Water Temple of the Crystal Springs Reservoir and Filoli, a sprawling 654-acre property with a mansion and “secret garden” to boot. Interestingly enough, parts of Rent and Joy Luck Club were filmed at the mansion–which wasn’t surprising, because it’s beautiful! I have tons of pictures, but I’ll post another time when I’m not lazy.

Saturday was D’s BBQ, which ended up being high school + Hawaii trip reunion… which I liked. And Snowball & Mowgli were there, too… which I doubly liked.

And the best part was that we finally saw Wicked on Sunday. Yes, after 2+ years of wanting to see it, hearing hype but not willing to shell out the money (though it would’ve been well-worth it to pay full price), I finally saw it. And it was just as good, even with all the hype and whatnot. I love good songs and good stories… so what was there not to like about Wicked? (: However, as much as I dreamt about it, we got no pictures with the sign or in front of the theatre, b/c I felt & looked like garbage at the height of my sickness. Luckily I didn’t feel that way during the show.

The good things about 3-day weekends is that it makes the week go by so much faster. The bad thing is that I don’t want this week to go by faster since I feel like I have so much to do before I leave for the other coast! Yikes.

#28 & #40 at the ferry building

#28: A Gibraltar at Blue Bottle Cafe

#40: Cheeseburger with sweet potato fries at Taylor’s Automatic Refresher

Better late than never… but late-March brought about the end of Winter Quarter at UCSD and as a result, many friends visited the Bay Area… specifically one of my favorites… S!

We decided to do a little whirlwind tour of the stuff she (& I) had been wanting to try in SF, and unsurprisingly, we started at the SF Ferry Building again, as I mentioned from my last 7×7 adventure.

For breakfast we shared a gingerbread [?] cupcake from Miette patissierie. And yes, we are adults now and eat whatever we want for breakfast. So we had a cupcake that day.

Miette decoration

Although Miette is tiny, it is SO adorable. Definitely worth perusing if you’re ever there (:

The cupcake was tiny for $3.25 compared to Sprinkles, but it was a case of quality over quantity; the cake was very moist and the flavor of the gingerbread was not overwhelming. The cream cheese [or was it vanilla? I don't remember anymore] frosting complemented the gingerbread perfectly. But there is rarely a cupcake I dislike. (:

As avid coffee drinkers, S & I got our coffee fix from Blue Bottle across the way.

My Gibraltar

Blue Bottle is a local roaster and has quite a few followers in the Bay Area. I’d heard about their strong coffee, but never had the guts to try it. However, I went with the Gibraltar, as recommended by the 7×7 list, which is actually named after the glass it’s served in. It’s a shot of espresso with a small amount (“dollop”) of milk and foam. Essentially it’s between a true machiatto (not the caramel kind from Starbucks, mind you) and a latte. A potent cup of coffee… and I loved it! I did have to add a little sugar, but yummm it was so smooth. Plus, espresso art is something I can always appreciate.

S got a mocha with a pretty leaf on top. I can’t vouch for hers, but it was probably strong in terms of espresso and chocolate.

S, cupcake, mocha

We rounded out our breakfast by strolling around the Ferry Building and admiring the view of the Bay Bridge out back. Since I spotted Taylor’s Automatic Refresher outside Blue Bottle, I asked if we could stay for lunch. From their to-go window, we were third in line and split a bacon cheeseburger with sweet potato fries. A bit of a  disappointment here–the wait took awhile (probably because it was prime lunch rush for the Financial District), and the cheeseburger was definitely not warmed up enough so that the cheese wasn’t even melted. ): What was interesting was that they use egg buns (which we didn’t know at the time.. we were wondering why it was yellow). Sweet potato fries naturally are delicious.. can’t really go wrong with that. We also ended up eating it in my car since we ran out of minutes on the meter, and at $3/hr, we (or at least I) didn’t want to spend any more on parking. Since we were parked next to the Embarcadero square, I thought of it as a ghetto picnic. teehee.

creme brulee (cart) run

Lastly, for dessert we went to find the Creme Brulee Man in the Mission district. Since it was a random Thursday, he was working out of a cupcake shop and didn’t have his usual cart, but S got a picture with him in his chef’s outfit anywho. (:

I hadn’t seen him in a while, so I tried a new flavor of his: lemon creme brulee with homemade blueberry topping. Sarah tried Ritual coffee, which is always one of my favorites.

Definitely over-ate, considering the sizes of our stomachs. But looking forward to more adventures when S comes back (:

I’m also starting to reset my expectations for the things on the 7×7 list. These are definitely not “omg, most amazing food EVER,” but they are supposedly the best of what the City has to offer and cover a lot of variety, most of which I would normally not try. I’m considering it more of a guide to new things I should look out for.

SF–the touristy side

a catch-up post, but JC and i took a touristy trip out to SF a few weeks ago. we ended up getting clam chowder and oysters on the half-shell at fisherman’s wharf (and a slight tour of the boudin bakery) and then caught alice in wonderland in 3D. no pictures of alice here, but i did take the dSLR out for a spin, with a few quick lessons from J.

oysters on half-shell, though the focus is on the lemon?

creamy, touristy goodness

preeeetty. (am i creepy yet?)

in other news, i’m heading off the hong kong & tokyo in the morning. it’s my first time leaving the country since coming back from studying abroad. i’m a little anxious about the HK leg of trip (approx. 7 days) since i’m going by myself and mostly spending time with family… and my chinese has deteriorated greatly since i was last back. regardless, i am excited to have a change of scenery and to come back with a pair of fresh eyes. yay for the travel bug!