Friday, May 28, 2010

Why SLC?

Why can't you have a 'House of Nanking' here? i'm so craving it right now! does anyone have any good chinese restaurant suggestions for slc? i feel like there isn't anything here! and NO panda, thank you.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

San Fran!

last week some friends and I went to San Fran for a few days. It was a total blast and I had a great time. Here are some pics from the trip. My fav. things from the trip include, fishermans wharf and the sea lions that i could have watched for hours because they were so entertaining, Lombard Street, Mara's Gelato, House of Nanking and all the restaurants there are to choose from (esp. streetside crab), although that was kind of a pain because we couldn't decide which restaurant to pick.
we drove there, yeah, all the 11ish hours. here is jason driving us into the city looking like a prof. driver (or something) in my cool rayban aviators.
this is us at fishermans wharf. it was so fun. the sea lions were my favorite, and so were all the other people watching them. it was like they were our pets and we kept making up the conversations they were having with each other (you know, like you do, when you have pets).
we saw the bridge a few times and even walked across once. that was pretty fun. and it was so neat when the fog was so thick you couldn't even see the top of the bridge.
this is us at the famous intersection of Haight and Ashbury. we stayed pretty close to here, which is also really close (we were across the street) from Golden Gate Park. We didn't get to spend much time in the park, regrettably. the haight and ashbury area (along with hippy hill at GG park) was interesting. there are a lot of homeless people living there and they are not like the homeless people i'm used to in sl that just quietly ask for money. they are loud, and very confrontational. i didn't like that aspect at all. if you didn't give them money or buy whatever junk they had they would often mumble reallly, super  mean things about you as you passed them by. just ask jason. 

this is us at Lombard street. it was really fun to walk up and down. although, more fun to walk down. it was pretty amazing to see all the people at the top taking pictures of it. and i didn't post it but the other streets at the top show amazing views of the city since it's on a pretty steep hill.
ghiradelli square wasn't amazing but they have two ghiradelli shops and they both gave us yummy samples. i love samples. and then at house of nanking, which was maybe the best food ever! i'm not kidding. i want to go back just for that. and that beef dish is just one of the five we shared. jason of course took pics of all of them but i figured you didn't need to see all of them. this was probably my favorite, well i don't know now. it's so hard to decide. so yummy though.

all in all it was a fun trip. i would like to go back and having been i think i would structure the trip a little differently. i wouldn't stay in the haight ashbury district just to avoid all the uncomfortableness associated with the homeless and creepers. i would spend a little more time in china town, go to coit towers, and eat at house of nanking at least twice. also, not travel on the bus too late at night, or maybe it was just the area.

one night (house of nanking night, actually) we took the bus home pretty late and during our ride home a small gang got on the bus. i of course being the naive 21 year old that i am just thought they were a bunch of drunk teenagers. After they got off the bus jason told me that at least two of them had guns with them and that they tagged the bus as soon as they got off. a couple of police officers got on the bus after them and so that's when i was like uh what's going on and jason proceeded to tell me about the gang. it's very interesting, i've noticed that when i'm in an uncomfortable situation i just sort of ignore everything around me, cause you know, if i can't see it or if i don't really acknowledge it's presence then they aren't there or whatever. maybe i should start to take notice of my surroundings more often.