Nataliya and Seth's San Francisco Vacation

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We made our way to Chinatown for dim sum and found a restaurant filled with only Chinese customers. We were the only "white people" in the restaurant so our hopes were high that this place would have decent food. We were not disappointed. The food was excellent and no one spoke English real good. [sic] Unfortunately, I couldn't read the name of the restaurant and they didn't allow credit cards - so no receipt... I guess they advertise by word-of-mouth ... too bad I don't understand Chinese, eh? Anyway, there was one waitress that spoke fairly well and I think she enjoyed speaking with us. All the others seemed a bit annoyed, but I guess that's to be expected when 95% of your clientelle are of Chinese descent.

After breakfast, we walked to Fisherman's Wharf and rented a 2-person scooter car at Scootcar Rentals and rode around for an hour, using their map as a guide. We went through The Presidio, down the "crooked part" of Lombard St., and back to the Wharf. Nataliya was a bit nervous on the large hills, especially on Lombard St. The only thing we forgot to do was take a picture of us on the scooters - guess we were having too much fun on them. Funny thing is that as we were riding, we became the tourist attraction as cameras took pictures of us in the scooter! So, there are pictures of us in the scooter out there... somewhere... but just not with us...

Then we were off to to Ghirardelli Square again, stopping for some more hot drinks and lots of free samples, all of which ended up in Nataliya's happy tummy! :) We looked for chocolate souveniers, but it's all so overpriced that we ended up buying nothing. They had one container there which held chocolate covered dried fruit. We remember seeing something twice as large at Costco back home for less... With that in mind we wanted to see if it was cheaper somewhere else in the city. (We were to find out that it's overpriced everywhere in San Francisco...)

Then we started walking onto a nearby pier that stretched into the bay, but the breeze was so cold that we turned back. Then we walked over to "The Cannery" where we listened to some live jazz music and went looking through some more shops. When I found that the "Cannery Wine Cellars" does wine tastings, I couldn't resist:

Year	Wine	Seth's Comments	Nataliya's Comments
2000	Stevenot Chardonnay from Sierra Foothills	Sweet smell, but dry with an aftertaste.	All those poor grapes... oh the horror!
2000	Graff Family Vineyards (Chalone Vineyards of Monterey) Mourvedre Free Run	A bit dry. It's not too bad, but again, this has an aftertaste.	Run Mourvedre! You're free!!
2001	Wildflower J. Lohr Monterey Valdiguii	This has a hint of sweetness but still tastes bad. It tastes almost as bad as it smells	J. Lohr? Don't they mean J. Lo?
1999	The Lorimier Mosaic	dry, tastes bitter	Lorimier Mosaic? How 'bout the Sethimeyer Mosaic?

No, Nataliya wasn't drunk - she wasn't even interested in trying these wines, so she didn't any. Actually, it was probably a wise decision since I wasn't at all impressed with these.

Then we did a very touristy thing... (which we should be ashamed of and beaten with a wooden spoon...) We had our picture taken and inserted into another tourist-attraction-type picture. The result of our efforts was a "fake" picture of what looks like me throwing Nataliya off the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. We all had a lot of fun doing it, though, and the owner asked us if she could use our picture to show off their work with the picture and in a video. We didn't care, so we agreed... She then hands us a waiver to sign to give her permission to do whatever she'd like with the pictures. She said she had just downloaded it off the internet this morning and didn't have a chance to run it by a lawyer or anything. Nataliya told her that I would review it. Puzzled, the woman asked Nataliya if I was a lawyer to which Nataliya decided to say that I was... I wasn't going to argue, although I wasn't sure why she was trying to get me in trouble! :)

I had lunch at Rico's and I enjoyed a "beef colorado burrito" - it was excellent! Too bad we don't have these types of burritos on the east coast! Nataliya wasn't too hungry, so she passed on this. Afterwards, we tried to do more shopping but the stores were all closed.

We then wandered into the Sony Metreon, and we had a light Japanese dinner at "Sanraku". which was just "ok".

We then crossed over onto 4th St. and we were back at our hotel for the night.

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