Lily & Leo

This is Lily’s 1st time in San Francisco and technically my first REAL time here as well!  What an adventure this trip was, we definitely made most use of all our time there and luckily Lily was a big trooper and was so good with all our travelling and activities!  Her naps worked perfectly into our schedules as well!  I’m feeling very tired (and lazy) to go into a detailed blog post about everything we did, so here’s a “quick” and sweet rundown of what we did!

We got in on Tuesday night and met up with Diana and Sean (friends from the great white north), and ate at a really yummy ramen place called Katana-Ya! We then went to Bi-Rite Ice Cream but arrived right when they were closing, but Diana and Sean told them they came all the way from Canada and so they let us in!  YAY Go Canada!!!  It was so good to see them considering these things don’t happen often!  And Diana taught Lily how to say “yes!”  Check out the video here!!

On Wednesday we started our day by eating lunch at HDR’s Coffee Shop, a Korean restaurant that serves Mexican food with Korean food instead (i.e. kimchi pork burritos, bulgogi tacos, etc!)  It was quite good!!  We made our way to Lombard street, and then grabbed a really yummy blueberry pancake cupcake from Susie Cakes.  We visited Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf!  It’s really cute and fun, I really liked the touristy vibe there.  We tried to visit the bridge but it was completely covered in fog, so owe tried to go to Land’s End, but we didn’t go on the hike because we didn’t wanna carry Lily up and down all those steps haha.  We visited the beautiful Palace of Fine Arts and then we wanted go to the Academy of Science but it was closed by the time we got there, so we went to the Japanese Tea Garden instead, and it was really pretty!  We then met up with Vy, Chris and Scott for dinner so that Chris and Scott and finally meet Lily!!!  That was fun and great to see them after so long!

Thursday we have a very pretty scenic drive south to Harley Farms in Pescadero, where we took a tour on the goat farm and got to pet the goats and a llama!  We got to see how they milk the goats and how they make all their cheeses!  They also had lots of samples and boy were they tasty!  It was a really pretty farm too!  We then continued our drive south to the Monterey Bay Aquarium!  It’s by far my new favorite aquarium now, it’s so nice and big and we even got to see them feed and train the sea otters (my favorite sea creatures!)  Lily had a blast in the splash zone too and she loved the baby corals corner too, a play area just for babies!!  We then went up to San Jose and had dinner with Joe Goan, Joe & Karen Cheng and got to meet their baby Kaylee for the first time too!  Thanks for making the time to meet us on 4th of July!  We didn’t do any 4th of July festivities, we saw some fireworks during out drive home, that was good enough for us!

Friday visited the Golden Gate Bridge and boy was it cold that morning!  It was a lil foggy but we managed to get a clear enough picture with the bridge!  We then drove north to Healdsburg for Tian and Tony’s Wedding!  It was such a beautiful wedding!!!  I loved all the details and the view was just so pretty!  It was great to see all my friends and celebrate T&T’s special big day! You can view more pictures from Tian & Tony’s Wedding here!

Saturday morning we went to Tian and Tony’s cottage for their goodbye breakfast and got to see my friends before going home.  We then went to see the Golden Gate Bridge from the north side of the bridge, and the view is MUCH better from there, so if you ever want to see it, see it from the north looking south!  You’re on top looking down at the bridge rather than looking up, so I think it’s much nicer.  We then went to the Twin Peaks to see the amazing view of the city, but man it was quite windy!  Afterwards we went to meet up with Aarin and his friends where Aarin tried to give Lily coffee and made her race around the lounge haha.  On the way to the airport, we HAD to stop by Kara’s Cupcakes to get the smores and passion fruit cupcakes, so devine!!!  We ended up having to go to the San Jose Airport instead of SFO due to the unfortunate accident that happened that morning at SFO, and it made me quite nervous flying home, but we made it home safe and sound!  It was a great vacation and we had so much fun!!!  It was nice to be outdoors and experience these new adventures with the two people I love most, Khoa and Lily! =)  Lily had so much fun looking at all the new sights and meeting all these new and old friends!  She most likely won’t remember this trip, but I will, and we can always show her pictures =).  You can view more pictures from our vacation here!