After a little time in Carmel

we headed back up to San Francisco - 

I'd visited a couple of times before [way] back in my college days so 

I was looking forward to sharing it with Craig!

 We traveled along the coast a bit before heading in-land to acres and acres
full of vegetables and fruit. 

 [Again - gotta love my super zoom camera 
- truly.]

 It was interesting to see them harvesting the lettuce / cabbage 

straight from the field into the boxes for market - talk about farm fresh! 

 And the Farmer's Market nearby! Oh my! So full of wonderful goodness! 

Artichokes and Brussels Sprouts like I'd never seen before!

[Two of my favorite things!]

 - We even had lunch there! 

Craig had fresh tamales and I had fried artichokes.

Delish.

[We'd stopped for tea along the way -- ha.]

It'd be easy to eat healthy if you could grow your vegetables year 'round!

Going into San Francisco we were on a mission 

to find the flock of wild parrots 

that live [RIGHT] in the city! Who knew?

 

Well, I guess a lot of people -- since there are websites devoted to their sitings. Ha. The first place we went was a bust, so we decided to just park and walk a bit in the other place and the website said we'd HEAR them before we saw them - 

 

And oh, how right they were! 

There were too many to count - with both red and green faces!

 They were roosting downtown in a little park near a Tennis Center. 

In this tree -

Right in the middle of people walking by unaware...

 

Again, how wonderful is my super zoom camera?

LOVED seeing these birds!

[I told y'all we love quirky.]

 We left our car in the park space we'd found and 

took a trolley down to The Wharf to eat at 

The Boudin Bakery

where they've been making sour dough bread since 1849!

 It was a great meal!

Then we took the new Bay Bridge over to Oakland to stay the night - 

This bridge was gorgeous at night!

But I don't think I got a photo - hmmm

 

We spent the next few days in The City and there is just no way to share it all with you -- 

We'd planned to take BART in and avoid the parking stuff but they were threatening to go on strike [and in fact, did, before we left for home] so we drove in after all.

 

Our hotel in Oakland was RIGHT DOWNTOWN - a few blocks from the BART station... in an old [[old]] building. And I like old, y'all - but the elevator up to the 7th floor creeped me out - think Tower of Terror -- and the floors in our room were so uneven I almost had inner ear problems -- and all I could think about was - if there were an earthquake there was NO WAY this building would stay standing - lol.

It was an experience...

But so was San Francisco!

 We LOVED China Town!

So colorful and fun! 

And kind of amazing that some people live 

their whole lives there without ever leaving ---

Seeing the same fortune cookie factory that I visited 

over thirty years ago was a treat!

[yum!]

 It's tucked away in an alley so it took us 

a couple of walk-throughs to find it - ha.

We rode cable cars...

 

Drove up to the Painted Ladies...

 

and over to Twin Peaks for some beautiful views of the city...

and just generally had a great time meandering the streets of San Fransisco and being a tourist. One of the things I noticed while in the car - was the lack of red lights - instead there were four-way stops all over the place... and it seemed to work for them...

Again, China Town [delicious lunch there, by the way-]

and down in the shopping district -

you never know what you might see --

We walked and walked and walked - 

and had such a great time - 

I can't say it enough -

 I just really enjoy BEING with my sweetheart. 

 That evening [?] we had dinner at
The Woodhouse Fish Company
over on Market Street. 
This is possibly the best meal I had during the entire trip...
well... after that yummy breakfast --
I had grilled artichokes with shrimp and crab. 
So very nice.

 Wonderful time!