Here we are with another installment of Instagram Travel Thursday!  This week, we’re sharing our first full day in San Francisco on our trip last fall, but other bloggers are sharing their trips from amazing locations all over the world!  

Just click the logo below to discover this week’s locations!

Waking up refreshed on our second day in San Francisco, we hit the pavement.  It was the only way to combat the amount of calories we would consume throughout the day.

First on the agenda, the Ferry Building for breakfast.  The Ferry Building is an absolute food lover’s paradise.  There’s a farmer’s market set up outside three days a week, vendors inside selling local, seasonal & sustainable meats, cheeses, breads, seafood & just about any other ingredient imaginable (one of these trips, we’re going to rent a place with a kitchen just to get our hands on these ingredients) & it’s also home to The Slanted Door, one outpost of Blue Bottle Coffee & oh, just take a look at the merchant list.

We grabbed coffee & a few saffron vanilla snickerdoodles, which I had just read about on 101 Cookbooks, from our perennial favorite, Blue Bottle & snagged the last stools at the counter of Cowgirl Sidekick for some delicious breakfast sandwiches to fuel our journey.  Outside at the Farmers Market, I couldn’t help but pick out a few fresh plums…they’re my favorite.

The next stop on our journey around the city was Cask, which is like a candy store to those of us living in a state where the government runs liquor store.  Tom couldn’t leave without a bottle of Glenmorangie Artein Super Tuscan Barrel Aged 15 year Scotch, so we bought it & made a cookie/plum/Scotch drop off at the hotel.

Next, we headed South of Market to City Beer Store for some sipping & shopping, including our first taste of Ballast Point’s Indra Kunindra (a coconut curry india style export stout that I think is so oddly delicious, Tom doesn’t feel the same), before it hit the East Coast & a Stone 07.07.07 Vertical Epic.  We left pounds heavier with goodies to bring home & hoofed it to The Castro for lunch.

{please note the joke on the chalkboard}

I actually read about Starbelly on Serious Eats instead of packing &/or sleeping the night before we left for California & I decided we would be going there because pizza with bacon & jalapeños topped with arugula & green goddess dressing is something I was not going to get out of my head without tasting it.  So why not walk clear across the city to go straight to the source?

Exactly.

& since we were in the neighborhood, we had to stop by Bi-Rite Creamery of course.

Did I mention it was the hottest day in San Francisco?  Because it was.  Hotter than at home in NC.  The difference being in North Carolina, we have air conditioning.

{the TransAmerica Pyramid}

After dark, we made our way to the Financial District with wine in mind, but got hungry on the way.  We Yelped a dinner location & ducked into Bocadillos, a four star reviewed Tapas Bar where we mopped off with our napkins (no air conditioning, remember?) & sat at the bar to enjoy salad, giant prawns & patatas bravas, all washed down with beer & even more water.

{this was one of the five days a year SF needs air conditioning & I’m sure the orange walls & warm lighting only made us feel hotter}

From there, it was on to our final stop of the evening, Barrique, a wine bar specializing in private-label wine by the glass poured directly from the barrel, or barrique.  It’s a fun, different experience with wine…no focus on the winemaker or the labeling, just the name of the grape & where it was produced.

We met owner, Matt Weese, when he was a wine rep for Mauritson, where he’s now making the wine for the wine bar.  We settled in to our table & I ordered a flight of whites, & Tom a flight of reds when Matt walked in.  He walked by, said hello, & we said hello below back & mentioned that we had met him awhile back.  Now, the life of a traveling wine rep must be a crazy one because his reply was, “Oh.  Shit.”  We assured him it was all good & he sat down to chat a bit.

We loved the atmosphere, the wines & the concept, so Barrique easily makes our “Must Visit” list for San Francisco & it was a perfectly relaxing spot to end our evening.

Distance covered?  10 miles.

Calories?  Justified.