Glad, we had a filling breakfast in the Clift Hotel's restaurant "Frederick's" - pancakes and eggs Benedict - before we started our "marathon" through SF - 10 miles in total on one day, despite using busses and streetcars profusely, in addition.
After a quick visit to the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market (photo on the left) - with regional farmers selling their gorgeous seasonal produce, we took a bus to Haight-Ashbury (pics below), to check out the neighborhood by walking along Haight Street. Similar to previously visited neighborhoods: shorter hours, shops or restaurants closed, more homeless people on the streets - more or less, all consequences of the pandemic.
Haight-Ashbury Victorian architecture:
Walked over to Alamo Square with its "Painted Ladies", always an eyecatcher, even on a pretty hazy day:
Not really good neither seems the current situation in the Mission District - what a contrast then to the fancy, modern, upscale Mission Bay District, an up&coming neighborhood! Plenty of tech & other skyrocketing companies, e.g. a whole campus of Uber (founded in SF) alone. Fantastic modern architecture (who can afford living here?), and, the new Chase Center (NBA-basketball) as well a playground&foodtruck park called ParkLab Garden are clear signs of the gentrification of an area, which was formerly an ugly industrial harbor area. Like SoMa and Dogpatch to the north a decade or more ago,,, space is limited in SF!
By train and bus on to North Beach - Washington Square was crowded on this sunny Saturday afternoon:
Same for Hyde Street Pier and, especially, for Aquatic Park, on the waterfront. Families were populating this beach, plus, a couple of hardboiled swimmers and many dogwalkers. Ghirardelli Square didn't change much neither.
Slow and rickety F-Line streetcar - not the fancy car on the photo above, standing at Fishermen's Wharf - brought us back from the waterfront to our hotel, where we quickly freshened up for our pre-arranged dinner at Le Colonial, a Vietnamese-French restaurant. Atmosphere was unique, food (many of the items on the menu unknown to us) spectacular. We had Phò, a vietnamese soup with mushrooms and noodles, as well as Imperial Rolls (crispy rolls with crab meat and other ingredients - photo) as appetizers, followed by two entrees: Lemongrass Chicken (prepared two ways, breast different from dark parts) and Claypot Salmon (2nd photo: very juicy salmon in a delicious sauce) served with garlic-butter noodles and rice.
Still had a drink in the famous Redwood Room of the hotel, now a bar, before we called it a (long) day with this view towards Nob Hill from our hotel room:
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