san francisco!

This past (extended) weekend, my friend Colleen and I took a trip out to the west coast to visit our college roommate Becky who is living and working in San Francisco as a volunteer.
I'd been there once before, years ago, with my family, but didn't remember much of my trip. This time around, I absolutely fell in love with the city.

San Francisco is one of the coolest, most interesting cities I've ever visited. It's cosmopolitan without being flashy, artsy without being (too) pretentious, and its location in the northern part of California and on the ocean means the weather is a bit more interesting than elsewhere in the Golden State. It also happens to be the site of 826 Valencia, the first of Dave Eggers' writing centers for kids (disguised as a pirate supply shop!) and McSweeney's, his venerated publishing house. Visiting those two sites was one of my favorite parts of the trip, but I decided they deserved a blog post of their own sometime soon.

Photographic evidence:

I finally got to try In-N-Out! It was pretty delicious, but as a french fry connoisseur, I was unimpressed by their attempt. Luckily, In-N-Out has a reputation mostly for burgers, not french fries.

We hung out in the Mission a lot, the neighborhood where Becky lives. In the background here, you can see Mission Dolores, the mission for which the area was named. I was also pretty happy about including a palm tree in this photo.

We warmed up one night after a walk around Fisherman's Wharf with Buena Vista's famous Irish coffees.

We danced at a bar called Holy Cow! (or tried to...)







Then we napped in a park with the Tanners and the rest of the Full House cast...





...after getting pretty silly at a brunch at Lime in the Castro, featuring bottomless mimosas for SEVEN dollars.





I made Becky take silly jumping pictures with me at the Palace of the Fine Arts in the Marina district.





Coll attempted to swim to Alcatraz, but the Pacific Ocean is just way too cold for that.





And of course, we posed with the Golden Gate Bridge, our last sightseeing stop on a fantastic weekend.

It was such a great trip, mostly thanks to Becky, who was an absolutely amazing tourguide. She knew exactly what we'd want to see, gave us lots of options, and knew lots about the city she's come to call home. Seeing her living with her volunteer community also made me really excited for my new adventure, just a short month from now, when I'll be moving to South Africa to start my volunteer year. I'm also really glad I got see Beck before I leave; a year is a long time to go when you're thousands of miles apart.

Thanks, Becky! I miss you already.