California Dreamin'

Last week, I took a week-long vacation to the west coast with Chris and Kasey to visit Andrew and Amanda. I spent the entire week adventuring throughout San Francisco (we originally intended to visit Portland, Oregon, but that actually fell through) with great company.

Our plane arrived in San Francisco on saturday night. It was pouring (the forecast actually expected rain for the entire week, but it didn't end up being that bad). Chris and I took a shuttle to Andrew's place, where we had dinner with Andrew, Amanda, Kasey, and Amanda's roommate Adri, and got really, really fucked up afterwards. San Francisco was off to a good start.

On sunday, Andrew, Chris, and I got brunch at a diner in Outer Sunset before hopping on a MUNI bus towards downtown San Francisco to see Amanda's apartment. Amanda and Adri have a really nice place and arguably the coolest pair of cats I've ever met (they lounge around and wrestle each other and scale the walls and chase lasers and pretty much own the place). After checking her place out, we explored Chinatown for a while. At one point, everyone (but me) got bubble tea and they were shooting those little tapioca balls at each other and it was hysterical to watch. I love how immature we all were and I hope we can all stay that way forever. In North Beach, we found an awesome pet store (with a parrot who apparently tells people to "fuck off"), a cool park to chill in (near a church where we had a mini-photoshoot), and Banksy artwork too! Then we stopped off at some cafe and got drunk, followed by a trip to the Fisherman's Wharf for In-and-Out Burger (it was delicious). Our night ended in the Mission, where we spent our evening at a really cheap bar and got really drunk.

Monday was going to be our ambitious day, since we decided we were going to climb Twin Peaks. However, we stopped off at Haight Street beforehand to get pizza for lunch and explore a little, and our ambitions to climb a mountain were eventually foiled by countless happy hours specials. Later in the evening, I remember getting lost while on the phone with Chelsea, and then I finally found everyone and we had thai food for dinner. The duration of the evening was spent chilling at Amanda's. Since Andrew bounced early, Chris and I had to take the 45-minute bus ride back to Andrew's by ourselves. I don't really remember the bus ride, but I do remember it feeling really short and drunkenly rambling the entire time.

On tuesday, we had lunch at a cafe and then snuck up to the top floor of the Westin Hotel. The top floor was essentially a really fancy banquet hall. The view of the city from up there was spectacular, and we kept hiding behind curtains in attempt to scare each other. We eventually got caught for trespassing after maybe 20 minutes and had to leave. The rest of the day was spent shopping, eating an irish buffet-style dinner, and drinking at Amanda's. We originally planned to wake up early the next morning to get a head-start on our day, but our ambitions were foiled yet again when we decided to each drink our own bottle of wine (as you can imagine, we did not end up waking early the next day).

Wednesday was really awesome. I believe it started with me, Andrew, and Chris eating a very late brunch, and then we met up with the girls and went to Exploratorium at the Palace of Fine Arts. Essentially, the Exploratorium is the Liberty Science Center on crack. Everything is hands-on and just really fascinating. We were all running around like hyper little kids the whole time; I just wish we could've stayed longer. Afterwards we hung around the Palace of Fine Arts, which is a series of massive pillars and domes and such that was right along a lake (it's like an ancient civilization that was built just a few years ago). It was really nice. Then we swung by the historic Golden Gate Bridge, ate at the Asqew Grill, and stopped off at a bar in the Cow Hollow district. We ended the evening at a bar in the Downtown area. Amanda and I had some LIT's and had a really intense conversation about the origins of our circle of friends.

On thursday, we ate at a burrito place near Amanda's, and then Chris and I took a ferry to Alcatraz. Of course the day we decided to go ended up being the wettest day yet. But it kind of set the mood, I guess. The island was pretty cool, although there were lots of areas that were completely blocked off (we were tempted to ignore the "do not enter" signs, but apparently that's a federal offense). The audio tour was poorly constructed, but hearing stories of the prisoners and the guards while walking around the cellhouse was extremely awesome. Later on, we all got korean BBQ for dinner and we had so much food. I was in heaven. I bought a round of Soju and Bek-Se-Ju and we got pretty drunk (or at least I did). We ended the night at some weird bar where the bartender was quite drunk, Amanda and I had irish car bombs, and some couple that was making out at the bar asked Adri if she wanted to join them (she didn't). It was pretty amusing.

Friday was our last full day in San Francisco, and it was quite epic. I started my morning early by waking up at 9 am to go solo adventuring. I put my feet in the Pacific Ocean, explored lower Haight Street, and went to Alamo Square (where I saw the "painted ladies," aka the house from Full House). I met up with Amanda and Kasey at the vinyl record store, and then we shopped along Haight Street, walked through the Panhandle to meet up with the others at a burger place for lunch, and later explored Japantown (where we found a store that had this crazy toilet/bidet thing, and where I poured water over a bridge onto this asian woman's car and she freaked out). We started pregaming fairly early at Amanda's and ordered-in food, and then we walked to a club to see Gold Panda. At the club, we snuck into a VIP area, Kasey almost got jipped out of a lot of money, Amanda knocked the glasses off some girl and almost got in a fist fight, Chris got dragged out of the club by this bizarre-looking bartender for pouring beer on the register (because the bartender ignored him), Andrew argued with this fat, female bouncer after trying to get to Chris, and I was told to leave by the bouncer after shouting obscenities at the bartender (at first I was told I can't say that as I'm on "private property," so I stepped off the curb and onto the street, where I shouted the same thing again and was then told I was "loitering"). Oh, and Gold Panda was good too. Once we were out of the club and struggled to get a taxi for a half hour (Chris almost died in the process), we drunkenly stumbled back to Amanda's (and eventually Andrew's) and stayed up really late (hence getting no sleep for our flight the next day). What a night.

And finally came the dreaded saturday, where Chris, Kasey, and I had to return to the east coast. All in all, despite the fact that I occasionally got unnecessarily quiet and upset while drunk, the vacation was a blast. San Francisco is a wonderful city, where the food is delicious, the people are chill, the architecture is amazing, and the homeless are crazy. I feel like we covered a lot of ground when we visited, but there's so much more to explore. I need to go back.