Posts filed under San Francisco
Posts filed under San Francisco
The Golden Gate Bridge shot from an awesome angle.
Ahh.. San Francisco, just love that city :)
Credit: Incredimazing
No itinerary today. Had Wanton noodles for breakfast at our favourite Chinese eatery, and we went to Embarcadero.
The Embarcadero is the eastern waterfront roadway of the Port of San Francisco. Bought a basket of strawberries from one of the many fresh produce stalls there. It’s probably the best strawberries I’ve eaten! Big, juicy and best of all sweet!
Seb found a perfect spot by the pier, overlooking Bay Bridge. We sat there for over 2 hours, doing nothing else, besides eating a beef pie and some Mexican food Seb bought.
Short day. I think we pretty much have San Francisco covered, except for places where we have to drive to get to.
After dinner at, guess where, our favourite Chinese eatery, we went back to our hostel to chill.. Maybe get some beer later.
Going back home tomorrow! “YAY”!
Woke up very late today.. Think I had too much to drink yesterday.. So we skipped breakfast and headed to Moscone West for lunch. They have my favourite WWDC food today – Thai Beef Salad. It’s so good that I ate 2 servings!
After a satisfying lunch, we hopped on to MUNI Line 30 from 3rd St and headed to Chestnut St to began the first leg of our tour today – Palace of Fine Arts.
The main dome of Palace of Fine Arts is currently under restoration works. So it’s quite a pity that Seb did not get to see the most spectacular feature there.
For the uninitiated, the Palace of Fine Arts was built in 1915 as part of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. It was designed by Bernard Maybeck, who took his inspiration from Roman and Greek architecture. To find out more, visit here and here
After PoFA, it’s the walk along Crissy Field towards our next destination – Golden Gate Bridge. The weather suddenly changed. It’s so cold and windy that I was kinda regretting not bringing my jacket along. And the fog was so thick that the Bridge was totally hidden from view.
Braving the cold winds with only my T-Shirt and Jeans, we finally got to the bridge. Although I’ve been here last year, I’m still awe-struck by her scale and engineering marvel. Furthermore, the thick fog gave her an almost completely different look, kinda surreal if you ask me.
We decided not to walk until the middle of the bridge because we might just die of cold before even reaching there.
MUNI Line 28 brought us back to 4th St where we had our dinner at Jack-in-the-Box. Sirloin Cheese Burger with Bacon, delicious but definitely not health food.
What shall we do tomorrow? No idea yet.. We shall plan over brunch at Henry’s.
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Breakfast was at a Chinese eatery. First part – TOTALLY SUCKED. It’s so sucky that I will not even bother to mention it. Then Seb decided to order some proper food (dim sum), which incidentlly made our breakfast nicer.. Anyway, thanks Seb for the Birthday (Singapore time) breakfast treat! :-)
Rest of the day were spent shopping and touring (instead of attending session at the Conference). Seb and I each bought a very exquisite holder for our iPhones at Crate & Barrel. We then went to Westfields. It’s a shopping mall which kinda resembles our Paragon, with all the luxury brands under one roof. Besides shopping, I finally get to try Jamba Juice! After watching it featured many times on David Letterman’s show, I got to try it at last! Refreshing, fresh and great taste. Maybe I can bring the franchise to Singapore.
Seb then went back to the hostel to sleep, while I went to Alamo Square (again). I just love that park.. With some time left, I ventured further west to Golden Gate Park. Nothing much there besides being a park.
Evening time came and it’s time for the highlight of our trip – WWDC08 Apple bash! Great food, booze, weather and Barenaked Ladies! They are AWESOME! Wonder how much to hire them for my own party. The only thing lacking in the party was….. you guessed it, girls! Ultimate sausage (geek) fest. But heck! Seb and I enjoyed ourselves.
LOVE SAN FRANCISCO!
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Breakfast today was Subway Melts. (If you noticed, our breakfasts are getting cheaper by the day.. That’s cos we are running out of money). After that, I headed over to Moscone West for my first session for the day – Controls, Views, and Animation on iPhone. Not too bad. Seb went to shopping instead and bought a pair of shoes from Aldo (nice buy I must say).
After lunch, we went to another session that was only added today – Push Notification Service. This new service from Apple is one of the major features in the coming release of both the iPhone 3G and Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). In general, it allows applications to send notifications in the form of badges, alerts and sounds asynchronously to the iPhones. Pretty impressive.
Deciding that we had enough sessions for the day, we took the Muni (Line 21 from Market St) to Alamo Square, to visit the Painted Ladies. Great view of SF from up there, nice cooling winds, adorable dogs running around, beautiful scenery – Awesome.
Dinner was at Mel’s Diners. I had Patty Melts, which is sort of a sandwich + burger. Seb had breakfast for dinner – Eggs, Steak and Toast. Afterwards, we headed back to Moscone for the Apple Design Award ceremony. It’s kinda like the Oscars for Mac OS X applications. This year they had 2 categories – Mac and the iPhone. Some of the winning applications were pretty impressive. A few of my favourites are: Squirrel for the Mac and AOL Radio for the iPhone.
Tomorrow’s the fourth day of WWDC08, which means it’s Apple Bash!!!!!! WOOOHOOO!!!
(My camera died while we were at Alamo Square. So no photos and videos until I get them from Seb’s camera)
Breakfast today was at a French bistro – Eggs, bacon, toast and coffee.
After breakfast Seb went sight-seeing while I went for a session at WWDC, which was totally boring..
After lunch, we headed out to the streets. First stop was Coit Tower. Basically nothing much up there.. Instead, the journey to Coit Tower was much more interesting. One of the many things that made me fall in love with San Francisco is the beautiful houses here. Walking along the undulating streets, admiring the architectures, enjoying the cool Pacific Ocean breeze… Awesome!
Next is a walk down hill to Lombard Street, the crookedest street in America. Been here last year already, so nothing exciting.
Fisherman’s Wharf is next.. Again.. nothing exciting here again. By the time we finished touring Pier 39, our legs were giving up, so Seb and I decided to take the Cable car back. Though I’ve been here last year, but I never took a ride on the cable car (Can you believe it?!). US$5 for a leisure ride back to the hostel – totally worth the money.
Just before heading back, we went to hunt for the World famous dish that is only available outside of Singapore – Singapore Fried Noodles. And we found it at a Chinese restaurant. The version we had had curry powder in it, quite tasty though.
Not plans for tomorrow yet.. Probably plan it over breakfast at our current breakfast haunt – Mel’s Diner.
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First highlight of the day: Our awesomely big portion breakfast (and cheap too!). We each had 3 eggs, an 6 ounce steak, potatoes and 2 toasts for breakfast, beat that! After having that breakfast, I now fully understand why people call it the most important meal of the day.
Day one of WWDC08 only means one thing – Steve Job’s keynote! So he announced the phone that would beat the iPhone – iPhone 3G, but I’m not totally excited about it. Don’t really fancy the plastic back too. The only thing that hurt me is the $200 price drop – Come’on Steve! That’s kinda too much?!
Lunch was great. We had Thai beef salad. Refreshing and tasty.
Following that is the Mac OS X State of The Union. Sometimes it is also referred to as the Keynote address not seen by the public. I was much more amazed by the State of the Union than the actual keynote. During the session, Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, gave us a good overview of the new technologies in the next release of Mac OS X, known as Snow Leopard. If you do not know, there will be only 1 new feature (visible to most users) in the release. Most of the improvements are done on the innards of Mac OS X itself. Go here to learn more about Snow Leopard.
After that, we went to 2 more (boring) sessions before Seb got drunk at the Welcome Reception.
Tomorrow we’ll be visiting Coit Tower, Lombard St and Fisherman’s Wharf!
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I AM BACK IN THIS BEAUTIFUL CITY! -THAT’S RIGHT! I’M BACK!
After an exhausting 16 hours flight, the jet lag was taking its toll on us. But we knew we had to fight it in order to tune our body clock to the new time-zone. After dumping our stuffs at our hostel, we headed straight out into the streets.
It was Seb’s first time here, so he was kinda excited (Just like me when I was here last year!). For me, I’m just happy that I’m back here again.
Fueled ourselves up at a local 7-11 store with some hot dogs. Down here, you order the size of the hot dog and the condiments are free-flow (reminds me of retro dog). Besides the usual stuffs that you can put in a hot dog bun (onions, pickles, jalapenos, salsa, ketchup, mustard), they have this cheese machine. Press the button and hot creamy yummy melted cheese oozes out onto your hot dog. D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S!
We headed to our first stop for the day, Moscone West, to get ourselves registered for the WWDC08 conference. Nothing much exciting happened here (yet), except for the event staff at the door whom melted our hearts. HAHAHA
After that we headed to the Civic Center of San Francisco. Bought some really nice cherries for US$3 on the way. There was this Philipino-American carnival just in front of City Hall, but apparently it’s paid entry. Since there’s nothing much going on, we decided to skip it.
Only one word can describe San Francisco’s City Hall – Majestic. We ending up taking tonnes of photo of it haha.
Last stop for the day was Hilton Hotel for a reception. Saw some old friends, people from my school and met a few new friends. Basically we are there more for the food, not much of the socializing (yeah, we are cheapskate people).
Tomorrow’s the first and most highly anticipated day of WWDC08 – Steve Job’s Keynote speech. Definitely going to be some new products. Oh, I heard some people are planning to queue from 4am just to ensure they have a seat in the main room. I guessed we’ll just settle for the overflow rooms.. we are dead tired now..
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Day 8 – Last day
The rest of the gang left either on Friday night or early this morning at 4am for LA, leaving only myself in SF. Got an E-Mail from one of them, saying he lost his watch in San Francisco International Airport (SFO), but was later found by the police and it ended up in SFO’s lost and found.
Woke up earlier in the morning, ran around the neighbourhood to find a internet cafe to print out the claim form and his photoID. Either they are closed on Saturday or they open at 10am.. and I’ve got a flight to catch. Finally, I managed to print the documents at the UPS Store.
Tip: Next time if you wanna send someone a document for printing, please send it in a printer-friendly format. It really saves people a lot of trouble
After printing, it’s another mad rush to the Airport. Checked in at the International Terminal; walked (a long way) to Terminal 1, where the lost and found is located.
“We’re opened from Monday to Friday 8am to 8pm”
Great…. after all the mad rushing..closed. The lost and found counter is actually inside a police post. Police in America also work 5 days a week??
My one week in SF has been an enriching and fun one. Gave me lotsa new perspective on things and life. Here’s another tip:
To all Singaporean who like to complain about Singapore (about anything) and yearned to leave this country, you better start appreciating what good system and good government we have here.
Got sick of burgers, chips and fried stuffs; so I decided that my last meal in SF will be rice. I miss rice!
Bye San Francisco! I love U! I’ll be back!!!
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Day 7 – Alcatraz Island
If you are traveling to San Francisco, and plan to stay in a hostel, here’s a tip from me: Down here in SF, all private rooms are subjected to 14% tax. Mixed rooms, on the other hand, are not taxable. For example, if you and 3 of your friends stays in one room, that’s considered a private room. However, if you, one friend of yours and 2 other people stay in that same room, it’s not a private room, i.e. not taxable. Spent the whole morning trying to figure out how come we paid extra..
Alcatraz Island’s the one and only itinerary for the day. Hmm Prison Break anyone? The place’s kinda errie.. We have this device that would give us an guided audio tour of the whole place, it has actual and dramatised narratives, it’s so good that while walking along the cells with that thing, it felt the voices were coming out from the cells..scary.. The isolation cell.. Castrophobic. The whole freaking island smells of bird poo. Why? Because it’s also a protected Sea Bird roosting area.
Dinner was some “street” food at the Wharfs: Clam Chowder, Calamari (freaking huge portion) and Mini donuts.
Heading back to Singapore tomorrow!! (NO!!!!!!!!!!)
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