[San Francisco。United States] California Road Trip: Driving up the Pacific Coast Highway

Lifa Haziran 07, 2022

I only found that I would have a Philosophy mid-term on the next Monday when I was packing my stuff on a Wednesday night for a 4-day trip to San Francisco setting off next morning 3 years ago. I totally had no idea why I could forget about the exam after attending the class (on and off) for nearly half a semester. To go or not to go - that became the question. So I spent one second to make up my mind and decided that there was no way that I would give up SF for one exam when I was on my exchange! After saying goodbye to any last-minute study or preparation, I went straight to the bed to prepare for the road trip setting off early next morning with no guilt or shame... :)

San Francisco is literally a city built on rolling waves of hills. Your view standing on a random street in SF would be something like the picture below.

Source: http://www.fullhdwpp.com/cities/san-francisco-tram/

Our road trip to SF started early on Thursday morning. The whole car ride took around 8 hours to get to SF from San Diego in good traffic. After settling down in a friend's house, we kicked start our journey in SF with the first stop being the SF-Must-See-Fishermen's Wharf.

Pier 39

I love the Fishermen's Wharf area despite it was pretty touristy. The area felt like a carnival with lots of interesting things to see. It was a great place to spend times at.

It felt so much like a carnival

Kid having fun

You couldn't miss Merry-go-round in carnival

Yachts

View from the other side of the Wharf - a totally different color tone

Fishermen's Wharf

Not far from this sign was a stall selling s good selection of fresh seafood take-away including different types of fishes and open-as-you-order oysters. The freshness and sweetness of the oysters were hard to forget. If I didn't remember wrongly, the oyster was around only USD 2 each. It was quite a reasonable deal.

Freshly-opened oysters

It was my first time visiting SF. This pleasant visit to the Fishermen's Wharf has left me a lasting good impression towards the city. As I have mentioned earlier, SF is a city built on hills and hills and hills. To get a better view of it, we decided to drive all the way uphill. This was what we saw standing on the top overlooking the city. It wasn't spectacular. But it was surely peaceful.

Overlooking San Francisco

After spending sometimes taking pictures of the beautiful SF view, we then drove to Berkeley for dinner. We went to this restaurant called Great China. It was apparently very popular in the neighborhood and it has really good online ratings. This seems like something one must go if you want to get some Chinese food in Berkeley!

Great China

Address: 2190 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94704

External Ratings: Tripadvisor (4/5); Yelp (4/5); Google (3.9/5)

Memories of the restaurant were very blurry after 3 good years. To be fair, I shall skip the "My Ratings" part for this entry's restaurant recommendations.

Rice in soup - although I have already forgotten the taste, they look pretty yummy in this photo...

Great China's famous dish - Sliced duck skin

The first day ended rather perfectly.

In the next morning, we headed to the SF China Town for some sightseeing. Isn't it funny how us Chinese always love to look for China Town to go wherever we are?

Good morning

Glad to see some Traditional Chinese words..

SF China Town

We bought this little thing from a random stall (士多) in the China Town. I believe that this "POP POP" thing is the childhood memories of many.

POP POP

We had so much fun throwing this POP POP thing at each other on the street. At the end we were even trying to throw it at random passerby on the street. It was so memorably fun and I couldn't hold my smile when I was typing this. Are they still selling this kind of thing in Hong Kong?

After laughing our heads off playing this "Novel Trick Item" (as described on the packaging), we headed to the famous Golden Gate Bakery nearby hoping to get some egg tarts and barbecue pork buns. I hadn't had Hong Kong food for quite awhile after going to California. It was great to finally have some. And the taste was not bad! Yumyum...

Golden Gate Bakery

Address: 1029 Grant Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133

External Ratings: Tripadvisor (4/5); Yelp (4.5/5); Google (4.3/5)

Golden Gate Bakery

We saw a bubble tea shop as we were heading back to our car. It felt so good and warm to have a hot bubble milk tea in SF's chilly weather :)

Taiwanese Bubble Tea @ SF

That was a great quote, China Town!

After visiting the Golden Gate Bakery, it was time for some real "Golden Gate". We left the China Town and drove to see the long awaited "Red Bridge".

Golden Gate Recreation Area

It was another peaceful and sunny day in SF. We had a relaxing stroll along the beach with the view of the Gate right in front of us. Loving this laid back style!

A typical SF day

Nice to meet you, Golden Gate of SF!

Stunning view of the Bridge on a sunny day

View from the Gate

Even the Monks were enjoying themselves at the Golden Gate...

We spent few hours in the area enjoying the beautiful view of the Gate and chitchatting. I wish I could have moments like this everyday in my life - carefree and peaceful.

It was nearly the sunset time and we decided to go to the Union Square area for dinner. We had some really "great" music accompanying us as we drove back to the downtown. It felt so great to listen to Friday by Rebecca Black and it further boosted up our holiday mood. We turned up the volume and pulled down the windows as we sang this song loudly in the car and to the cars around us (even when the cars stopped side by side in the traffic). These were childish but adorable memories. I could not even recall this song if I was not writing this entry.

This song was played thousands of thousand times throughout our SF journey,
along with some other ridiculous songs that were very "hit" 4 years ago

We randomly searched on Yelp and finally found Tommaso's Ristorante Italiano.The food was good. And I remember there was a pretty long queue.

Tommaso's Riswtorante Italiano

Address: 1042 Kearny St, San Francisco, CA 94133

External Ratings: Tripadvisor (4.5/5); Yelp (4/5); Google (4.2/5)

Looking good

Seafood spaghetti with tomato sauce <3 I wanna have some right now...

Second last day - we finally see the signature SF trams in person!

Signature tram in SF

Besides the signature SF trams, the Lombard Street is another thing you must see if you are in SF. (Don't know what is Lombard Street? Try google "curvy street in SF"... hahah)

We successfully located the Street after getting lost in the neighborhood for almost half an hour. But come on, all the streets and buildings in SF look similar...

Lombard Street

The Lombard Street was very memorable and unique. I wonder what the people were thinking about when they were designing the street. But obviously it was a very successful idea and it brings thousands of thousand people coming to visit it every year.

We drove across the Castro Street as we were heading home after dinner. Some people may not know what is so special about the Street - the Castro is one of the very first gay neighborhoods in the States. It is a world famous gay community which features parade and fair every year that attracts homosexual advocates and supporters all around the world. Driving through the street you could see many rainbow flags and rainbow neon lights around. It is hard to imagine if there is such a street in Hong Kong. Highly appreciated!

Castro

Before kicking start our visit to the Stanford University on our last day, we had some really good Pho in a restaurant nearby where we stayed.

Pho restaurants are everywhere in California

It was another sunny and warm day in SF. Just by looking at the photos you could tell how beautiful the weather was on that day.

Stanford

Visitors enjoying themselves in Stanford

Even swimming in the fountain...

You couldn't miss Yogurt in Cali

The Stanford campus was classy and well maintained. We had so much fun indulging ourselves in imagining that we were one of the students studying in this prominent institution.

All good things on earth will finally come to an end. So does this memorable trip to SF. We ended the day with a decent dinner at Maggiano's Little Italy. And then we were all ready for the drive back to San Diego.

Maggiano's Little Italy

Address: 1042 Kearny St, San Francisco, CA 94133

External Ratings: Tripadvisor (4/5); Yelp (3.5/5); Google (n/a)

The trip to San Francisco was one of the many trips that I did during my exchange in California almost 3 years ago. This trip was extremely spontaneous but it turned out to be one of the happiest and memorable trips that I have ever done. The memories still feel so dearly adorable after so long. On top of the places that I have mentioned above, indeed we had also visited some other places in SF including Silicon Valley. But since I didn't take good pictures of them, I decided that I would just skip them in the entry.

The memories of the SF trip were youthful and innocent. My friends and I did many stupid and crazy and ridiculous stuff during the trip. As much as I want to write every bit of them in this entry, I find that words cannot genuinely describe the happiness that we shared. I guess they shall just live in our shared memories.

SF has an unimitable ambiance and is beautiful in its own way. I love this city and I believe many of you love its unique attractiveness too. I hope this entry of mine would give you some motivation to make San Francisco your next travel destination :)

To end this post, I would like to share with you this song of Jack Johnson that reminds me of the chillness of SF.