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Happy New Year!



Goodbye 2012 and Hello 2013!

We spent the last four days of 2012 celebrating the year's end in
San Francisco


My reward for completing my list and surviving the feasting.  San Francisco during the holidays is so beautiful and festive and full of so much to do


and so much to eat!


And we got our fill of all of it!  


There is so much history 


and tradition
and we could feel it's presence everywhere we went.

My highlight was going to the Nutcracker which I haven't seen in years.


 I loved the music, the costumes, the dancing…well, everything.  The venue was gorgeous, of course - the War Memorial Opera House…again... full of history. 


It's where the United Nations began

a very old and elegant place


perfect for the Nutcracker with lots of nutcrackers on display.

Being the tourists that we are, we had to buy one for a souvenir. This guy was just begging for us to buy him

and you can see how comfortable he is in his new home amongst all his other Christmas friends.
Bruce's highlight was shopping since he doesn't shop very much at home.   He actually enjoyed shopping here.  He had his own store - the Macy's Men's Store - all six floors of men's clothing.

It was a good thing we brought enough luggage and flew Southwest so we could check in all our new shopping bargains. But mostly we did sightseeing to see all that San Francisco has to offer. We walked everywhere or occasionally hopped on a cable car.

We spent the majority of one day at Fisherman's Wharf


taking in all the sights and smells


and stopped in for a bowl of chowder, of course.  


We were entertained by all the street people 


but I liked the sea lions the best


who live in the bay and feel right at home here.



The sunshine made for a sleepy day and a good day for sailing with Alcatraz in the background.


Ghirardelli Square is near here 


so I had to check out their chocolate selection which wasn't too shabby.


In order to walk to Fisherman's Wharf from Union Square we had to pass more historical San Francisco sights like the Coit Tower which was built in 1933 as a memorial to the San Francisco firemen

and my favorite

I want a car so we can drive down it!  Not this trip…


 and my other favorite - Chinatown.

This is the largest Chinatown in the country and lots to see here

and I imagine lots to eat but we didn't eat here this time because you can only eat so much in a day.


But one of these times we will have some authentic Chinese food here.  The next day we did eat authentic Vietnamese food at a restaurant called the Slanted Door at the Embarcadero Center which ended up being our best meal of the trip.  No wonder.  It's the most acclaimed Vietnamese restaurant in the U.S.   We didn't really know what to order so we went with the server's suggestions which started with a traditional noodle salad.  

Everything was served family style so we shared everything except the pho which was the best "chicken noodle soup" I've ever tasted.


 The entree was a chicken hot pot served with rice 

that was such an abundance of flavor and deliciousness!  Even my tea was an interesting concoction.  It was called Thousand Days Red Jasmine tea with a red clover flower

As the tea steeped, the flower dropped to the bottom of the glass opening completely.  


We had a perfect view of the Bay Bridge as we enjoyed this meal.


We didn't order dessert but I did notice they had the same cotton candy sensation as our favorite Boise restaurant, Barbacoa.

So, I would highly recommend The Slanted Door if you are in San Francisco.  A fun place to go is Lefty O'Doul's which was the first place we went after we just arrived late in town.

Immediately, we were entertained by the piano bar.

The restaurant is named after Lefty O'Doul who was a major league baseball player from 1919 -1938 and it was full of baseball memorabilia.  Our kind of place.

It's known for it's buffet

and large selection of foods to choose

and basically cheap eats.  Bruce loved the turkey wings.

It's located one block from Union Square so a perfect location.

It was a very fun place to begin our 4 day stay in beautiful San Francisco.  Now we are home and settling back into a routine again.  The holiday meal planning is over, the guests have returned home, no shopping left to do, the lists have been tossed and the weather has gotten cold and frigid - it was actually snowing this morning!  The cats are trying to stay warm and I am too. I think I left my heart in San Francisco.








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