San Francisco Day 3: Japantown, Union Square, Fisherman's Wharf

Honestly, I am going to try to finish talking about this trip before I go to San Diego but I'm being honest with myself when I say it probably isn't going to happen. XD; I don't know why I don't have as many pictures with my mom... I think she is holding the camera a lot of the time :P

Anyway Day 3 we spent in downtown San Francisco, and we saw all the tourist-y things as neither Kuya A nor Ate M had seen them before (it's about a 3 hr drive for them, so quite a distance - and hotels are expensive!). The weather was gorgeous, and after another train ride on the BART from the airport we bought day passes to tour more of the city. It was cheaper for us to get the day pass as it is valid on the regular bus system and the cable cars :)

I suppose my new rule of thumb is that if a city has a big Asia/Chinese/Japanese shopping area I will want to go there. Hence, our first stop was Japantown (I wanted to visit the Daiso but it turned out to be really small and disappointing), which my parents were surprisingly OK with... turns out there's a big cathedral on the way there, haha. Japantown was mostly a series of shopping centres with lots of restaurants, and some random knick-knack stores (and a Sanrio, of course).

Some of it was very reminiscent of my trip to Tokyo though :) Like all the food displays! My cousins asked me several times if 'this was authentic' which  made me laugh... not sure how to respond to that!

I had ramen with a sashimi side for lunch even though it was actually REALLY hot outside - this was pretty OK I think. Nothing life-changing ;)

:)

After that my dad and I went back to Union Square while my cousins and mom went to see the giant cathedral (my dad wanted a sitting break). While we waited, I ducked into Nordstrom's hoping to try on one of the Tom Ford lippies... this is 'Pure Pink' which I LOVED and was prepared to shell out 45$ USD on... except it was sold out >___<; I resolved to try to get it in LA (but was thwarted there too :S)

This was our meeting point. I thought this side of the heart was prettier than the gold side. Lots of people just sitting outside enjoying the beautiful weather (and also a lot of street musicians - a nice soundtrack for the day!)

Honestly we only went back to Fisherman's Wharf was because my mom wanted to get 'value' from the day passes by taking the street trolleys again (as it is 5$ each way) and since my cousins hadn't seen it before - why not? Thankfully we took the streetcar that stopped on the other side haha. Finally saw Ghirardelli square (though we didn't buy any chocolate).

We also stopped by a free-admission nautical museum. I liked the old lighthouse beacon - very pretty!

That evening Kuya A took us for dinner at Patio Filipino - definitely my first 'fine dining' Filipino experience!

Pancit Bihon

Garlic Friend Chicken and Crispy Binagoongan (this was SO GOOD)

Sizzling Sisig - very sour but delicious - my first time having this!

Fresh Lumpia

The food was delicious and we were definitely WAY too full for dessert afterwards. We also got to meet one of Kuya A's uncles from his mom's side - apparently he kept telling my parents  that I was very pretty (in Tagalog, which I don't understand). My parents kept referring to me as the 'pretty' one for the rest of the trip :P