SF twice in one weekend

For how much I usually avoid going into the "big city" of San Francisco, going twice in one weekend is quite an event for me. It started off Friday night with a birthday celebration for fellow mechanical engineering student James at an SF bar. Tucked behind a nondescript front, this bar had a great back patio packed with tons of picnic tables and people. The highlight of the bar though was the tamale lady who sold sketchy but delicious tamales out of her little ice chests.

I must have been feeling more confident after "braving" the city Friday night as I agreed to go into the city a second time on Saturday with Lindsey. Another friend from Mines, Sara, just moved to the area to attend pharmacy school at UCSF so we met up with her to do a bit of exploring in her new home. We had an "urban hiking" experience of sorts as we visited the farmer's market at the Ferry Building and then walked all the way up Market St. to City Hall to check out the Slow Food Nation Festival. Meant to encourage people to get their food more locally, the festival seemed more like a decadent/specialty farmer's market with a hippie-bent to me ... but it was still entertaining and had a lot of great samples.

After we were completely full of delicious peaches, plums, pluots, and hibiscus lavender lemonade we headed over to see Sara's new apartment. I had never really been into the more residential areas of SF before and I was pleasantly surprised at how much more relaxed and laid back it was than the crazy busy city I usually think of. It was amazing how many amazing restaurants were located within walking distance of her apartment too! I'm afraid I would want to eat out every night if I lived down there and had all of those options.

So after a weekend full of the "big city," San Francisco, I must say I was very pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed it and may even be willing to go more often in the future. However, I'm still not quite ready for the city-living experience and it felt great to get back to the little bubble of Stanford, pick some fruit from the garden, and open up the windows and not hear the city noise.