city. happiness.

so i'm going to share tons of photos and the story of the weekend. first, we stayed an extra night! we had to. the traffic was just too bad going in, so we didn't get checked in and whatnot until about 7pm. so we just needed another day. :] made me happy. so the first picture we took in the car. i think we were near davis maybe by then? i'm not sure. but we seriously were in traffic from auburn to davis. usually i don't hit it until past roseville. i was not a happy camper, but i tried not to flip out too much.

so once we were settled into the room and whatnot, we decided to venture to north beach for italian. we took a taxi, and while it was still a cab ride, it was more mellow then some i've had. ha. we walked down columbus for a while trying to find this place recommended by a guy at the hotel, but we gave up after it wasn't where he said it was. so we decided to just pick some place and ate at this little restaurant [caffe delucchi] and it turned out so well. first, we got to sit in this little window/corner booth. it was kind of private and just mellow. the food was good and the prices were fair. i wouldn't mind going back there. [the photo was actually taken today... it was cuter at night with all the lights and whatnot, but i forgot to take a picture! so i snapped this one from the car on our way out of the city. ha.]

after that we walked down columbus some more. we went by city lights bookstore and the green george lucas building. i don't know what it is, but i am just fascinated by the beauty of this building. i mean... i find the whole city beautiful, but this building captivates me.

after that, we met up with andrew and a bunch of his friends/coworkers. we decided to walk to the club he was at... it was an interesting walk through the tenderloin. there was only one point where i honestly felt like i might get shot. other than that, it was ok. i certainly wouldn't have wanted to be alone or with just another girl, but it wasn't too bad. i find the homeless folks pretty harmless for the most part. so the club was a hipster place, as andrew explained when we got there. just dance music, so there were some interesting dance moves going on downstairs, but upstairs was pretty chill. i think it was my style. james said it wasn't really his style. i felt kind of bad... but he was good about it. we kind of called it a night early because we were tried from tons of walking and the drive and not getting tons of sleep the night before. plus poor james had been up since 6:15 because he had to work.

saturday we really didn't do a whole lot. i woke up to get breakfast at 9:30 and brought some back for james... then we just kind of slept/watched tv until we decided to start the day. so we were kind of on a mission to find james a pea coat. we went to macy's and checked in at the cheesecake factory then headed over to men's macy's to look. no luck. so we just went back and waited for our table. our meal we pretty good, but james ordered an appatizer and it took a really long time. i didn't notice so much, but at the end of our meal, our waitress told us we could have dessert on them since the meal took so long and we were so patient. ha. the whole reason we went was for the cheesecake and then we got it for free. delightful!

the rest of the day, we just kind of shopped around on the pea coat mission. no luck. bummer. we did quite a bit of walking and our feet were still pretty sore from friday's walking, so we called it a night early and went back to the hotel around 11pm. [after stopping to get me a toothbrush. yes. i forgot it. lame.] i couldn't sleep as usual, so i kind of bothered james [who fell right to sleep when we got to the hotel] until he was awake enough around 2am to go for a walk with me. we just did a little loop around. we went by ruby skye just because and stopped in union square for a while to look at the big tree and we went to starbucks on the way back to the hotel.

this morning, i made james wake up early to go to breakfast with me. the freaking key would not let us in. i have no idea why not, but i didn't feel like complaining. since we were up, we just decided to pack up and checked out. we went to the ocean first. tons of fun pictures. this one was actually taken by someone. gotta love the "we'll take yours, you take ours" photo exchange. :] then we went through golden gate park. stopped at the big windmill. the street we wanted to take through was closed, so we didn't get to see what james wanted to see. [i guess that's why there will just have to be another trip.] then we went to fisherman's wharf to get a bite to eat. james kind of wanted to see what it was all about, so although the parking was a bit of a situation, we made it there. ok. well i sort of gave up, but then we ended up driving down lombard st. and i thought we should park to figure out a new plan... well we just decided to walk from there. it worked out well. we ventured down to pier 39, but i only wanted to get some doughnuts and show james the sea otters. he liked it because there is a part in a video game that is from the pier. ha. after that, we left the city. it was a good trip. it was a great drive home. not too much traffic and the roads were pretty clear. i did manage to obtain a little crack in my mom's windshield because a rock flew up. grr. the roads were so sandy from the storm. so that was sad, but she wasn't really mad about it. all in all, i am just a happy girl right now. the trip was amazing.

tomorrow i leave for LA. i am going to miss james. i am excited to see paul and amanda though and just have some family time. i am off to play with my video camera that has finally been uncovered after 3 years. ha. i'm going to see if i can make it work and maybe i'll take some film in disneyland.