My birthday was last week and it was my very favorite birthday in recent memory. I very rarely feel the need to recap my own birthdays, but this was a great one. The weekend before my birthday, I got to spend 48 hours with my favorite person ever, celebrating in one of my favorite cities. We went to San Francisco, which incidentally is where we spent my birthday four years ago, when we first moved to northern California, even staying in the same hotel (thanks to my favorite in-laws for hooking that up and also for flying down to watch LG!)
San Francisco holds a special place in my heart because it’s kind of where Chris and I decided to “make this thing happen,” if you will, and where he met my parents for the first time (more on this later.) This was all about a month or so into meeting each other, so forgive me, but San Francisco just brings back a bunch of warm fuzzies for me whenever I’m there.
Anyway! Onto the birthday recap. Once my in-laws arrived on Saturday, we fled the house whooping and hollering and made our first stop to Napa to pick up our champagne shipment and grab a little snacky lunch.
Rough stuff.
Then it was onto the ferry which was…stranded in the middle of some kind of body of water. No matter! We hopped on a bus (LOL LOL I don’t do buses, but I survived) and got to our hotel.
First stop on the agenda was drinks at the Top of the Mark at the InterContinental. We’ve done this before and had a great experience, but this time it was just okay. Kind of shoddy service, a not-great view (not the Mark’s fault; it was rainy), but fueled by gin drinks, we soldiered on…
Martini for Chris, French 75 for moi.
…Followed by dinner at my most very favorite restaurant in San Francisco. A blog reader recommended Osteria to me years and years ago, back when I blogged under a different name and when I still lived in San Diego. Since then, we’ve been back countless times because it is just. So. Good.
This salad is one of the greatest things I’ve ever eaten in my life.
After dinner, we trudged through the rain (I…might have been a touch cranky) and finally ended up at our hotel where we watched the Olympics and passed out like the 30-somethings we are.
On Sunday, I had high hopes of tracking down a croissant or other breakfast pastry, but after walking around North Beach for awhile , The Hangry hit and so we had to find a place to grab breakfast. Like, immediately. We stopped at Caffe DeLucchi and were quite pleased.
The eggs were poached so perfectly, I thought they were little dollops of sour cream.
The it was onto the Buena Vista for Irish coffees. When Chris first met my parents, the four of us hunkered down here and drank 18 Irish coffees in about two hours. Not to worry, we did also share a grilled cheese sandwich. Between the four of us.
Yes, sir, just another 17 more and I’ll be set.
Then it was once again back to the hotel for some R&R before heading back out in search of Chinese food. Our hotel is very close to the entrance to Chinatown, so of course I insisted Chris pose with this lion:
For LG!
The we went to Hunan Home’s (thanks for the rec, CH!) and ate way too much food.
This is not Hunan Home’s. I ate way too quickly to take a picture. Imagine tasty green beans & pork and orange chicken.
After Chinese, we were in one of those states where we were too full to do much of anything but sit around, but it was too late in the afternoon/early in the evening to go take a nap/turn in early and so we powered through. First we stopped by Comstock Saloon for some craft cocktails:
Bourbon, gin.
Then we got a real hair up our asses and decided to recreate that first trip to San Francisco. On that trip, I had a guidebook that listed all of the diviest bars in San Francisco and we made it our mission to go to all the places on that list. Some of them were no longer dive bars and were instead other kinds of bars and some of them were very, certainly, decidedly divey. One was a bar/convenience store/recycling center. They’ve since revamped the place — and yet didn’t change the name; it’s called Grasslands, if you’re interested — but when we stopped in for a drink this time, it just didn’t have the same je ne sais quoi as the last time. (Yup. Just used French to describe a dive bar.)
We couldn’t quite remember the name or location of one of the dive bars that really tickled our fancy, but checked out the maps on our phones and thought we’d found it. As we walked down the alley where we thought it was, hoping that it hadn’t closed down in the last seven years, I heard the telltale sounds of Chinese karaoke. I knew we’d made it.
No filter needed — the Bow Bow Cocktail Lounge is really that red.
We karaoked, drank g&ts, and had an all around fun time, culminating in late night pizza and popcorn in the hotel.
The next day it was time to head home. Not to worry, I did manage to get a croissant before we left.
Until next time, m’ lady.
Fun, fun, fun!
We actually did have TWO grilled cheese sandwiches at the BV – ahem.
I thought those poached eggs were dollops of sour cream.
I must to try the Bow Bow Cocktail Lounge. Looks like my kinda place.