This Instagram Travel Thursday post concludes our trip to Northern California last fall.  Don’t worry though!  This won’t be our last IG Travel Thursday…we just booked our next big trip, so lots of good things are coming!  

Our final day in San Francisco began just like the first, with a walk down to the Ferry Building for breakfast.  Although, this day breakfast consisted of Blue Bottle Coffee, a meat cone from Boccalone & dessert in the form of more saffron vanilla snickerdoodles from Blue Bottle…because on the last day of vacation, it is downright necessary to have dessert after breakfast.  Especially those cookies.

We shopped for a bit & bought my sister a totally-appropriate-for-her-to-wear-to-Catholic-school hoodie.

{photo credit}

We did a little bit more shopping as we made our way back to Union Square to meet our friends who were coming up from San Mateo for the day.  Then the four of us hit the streets again, taking the “scenic” city walking tour down Market Street with it’s “hotels”, strip clubs, & police supervised street-side chess games, all the way to the Mission for lunch.

Tartine’s bread has to be some of the most highly regarded, most written about bread, so we knew we had to make time for it this go ’round.  We hit the Sandwich Shop within Bar Tartine, ending up with four different sandwiches, sampling a little of each others, & that bread really is phenomenal.  But also?  The pickles.  Those pickles are like no pickle I had ever tasted & they’re not something I will forget anytime soon…familiar, yet so very different at the same time.  Seriously, so good.  (After a little investigation, it turns out they’re fermented pickles.  We might have to try this.)

& because it was nearby, we had round two at Bi-Rite Creamery.

After our ice cream, we took a little stroll to make room for more calories…in the direction of Toronado.  In the few times we’ve been to Toronado, it never struck us as the kind of place we’d want to see in the daylight, but their draft list is just so damn enticing.  It really wasn’t so bad, although we didn’t venture past the front room.  Actually, it was pretty lively for a bar in the middle of a weekday.

Slightly buzzed, we made it over to Alamo Square Park to check out the Painted Ladies, aka the houses in the opening credits of Full House.  They’re very pretty historic homes, & in the right light would make a postcard worthy picture, but I guess I had just imagined that they would be more vibrant?

{not impressed}

Then we ventured to a new part of the city, right near AT&T Park actually, to check out 21st Amendment, having completely forgotten that it was Game 5 of the NLCS.  You know, the series that would decide who would go to the World Series.  The San Francisco Giants being one of those teams.  The place was PACKED.  We wedged our way into the mezzanine area, but they started running out of beer, so we squeezed our way back downstairs & squished into some nonexistent standing room around the bar.

We drank Pumpkin Schmunkins, Hell or High Watermelons, & 5-Souths & high-fived strangers as the Giants ran in to home.  Hunger finally set in, & there were no seats & people were absolutely not leaving while the game was on, so we were off  in search of food.

Now, in North Carolina we get pretty serious about our Tobacco Road basketball, but being in the city of a professional home team during a playoff series was pretty incredible.  The city was electric.  As we walked through the streets, all the restaurants & bars had their windows & doors flung wide open, the volume on their TVs cranked, & the crowds inside were roaring.  All along our way we ducked in & out of several of these places, stopping to cheer the Giants on to their 5-0 win against the Cardinals.

After all the walking we did, we were hungry, tired, & not at all willing to battle any kind of crowd, so we made way for Pearl’s Deluxe Burgers.  The place is so tiny, it seats maybe twenty & every table was full.  So, we took our burgers, garlic fries, & frings back to our hotel room where we collapsed into heaps on the floor, on the bed & sitting at the desk…tired, full & sad to say goodbye to it all in the morning.

Don’t forget to visit all the other wonderful locations through the link up!