You didn’t think that we were already done with San Francisco, did you? Oh no, we had planned some serious exploring of the city for today. We started the day off by driving around San Francisco for a good 2 hours. There’s a route called ‘Scenic 49 Mile Drive’ which takes you around most of the important views and attractions. It’s very extensive, so we only managed to do half of it, but the views on the way were well worth all that driving!

So many super steep streets (they made me squeal a bit at first, but I got use to them) and the Golden Gate Bridge keeps popping up between buildings. SF is such a fun city to drive around. Very diverse, colorful and the steep straight streets reveal loads of breath taking views.

Of course we needed to take yet another Golden Gate selfie, as you never have enough of those. I think you can tell that we were freezing here. I’ve found out that being close to the pacific ocean in Northern California means loads of cold and biting wind. I might have to go and buy a windbreaker jacket.

Next we met up with Kenan and Megan in Japantown for some lunch and a spot of shopping. Japantown is San Francisco’s Japanese neighborhood with a lot of Japanese cuisine, a Japanese mall and even some hotels. We spent our time exploring Japan Center and really enjoyed the food displays at some of the restaurants.

The variety of food on offer was truly amazing and we  seriously over ordered (as you can tell!). For starters we got gyoza (dumplings filled with veg and meat), Japanese croquettes (deep fried patties made out of mashed potatoes and white sauce), edamame (soy beans) and tempura (deep fried vegetables).

For our main course we had katsu curries (deep fried fish or meat in a seriously scrumptious curry sauce) and ramen (noodle soup with vegetables, meat, fish, eggs etc.). You can imagine how stuffed we were afterwards.

We browsed for another hour or so and then drove to Pier 39 to visit the sea lions.

There were tons of them just hanging out on rafts near the pier, chilling and stinking up the place. They were seriously loud too, but fun to watch for a bit.

Pier 39 looks like something out of Disneyland and is insanely touristy. But again, the views were amazing. Especially the views of Alcatraz island.

For dinner we went to Boudin to sample San Francisco’s amazing famous sourdough bread and it did not disappoint!

When in San Francisco, you just HAVE to try the clam chowder (thick and creamy clam soup) in a sourdough bread bowl. Incredibly filling and comforting. But we couldn’t finish that massive bread bowl.

I also got a side of garlic fries because I love garlic so much. They were excellent and satisfyingly garlicky!

Thomie really did his best but that bread bowl defeated him.

For dessert we all shared this cute little portion of cinnamon beignets (donuts from New Orleans) with vanilla ice cream. Just a couple of spoons per person, which was perfect.

Boudin sells loads of cute sourdough bread animals like this crab. A fun place to check out when in San Francisco and the food is really fab.