San Francisco (Day One)

Left LA with a heavy heart. We left Zooey all by himself. He was given enough food & water though to last for 2 days.

I plan to go back here 'cause I think my LA trip is still missing sumthin'. I plan to do a bus tour of the Hollywood place. I wanna see the big Hollywood sign. I wanna see Beverly Hills, CA. I wanna see Rodeo Drive. Anyhoo, I hope I can come back here soon.

We made a brief stop at Walmart to buy some drinks and snacks. Even though our travel time is like 6 hours, we're pretty sure it would be longer than that. Jesse took charge of the driving first then Gev took over. Got nuthin to do so I tried to get some shuteye. Ogz and I brought our pillows for mo' comfort.

Around 6:30, we reached Santa Nella and had brekky at Denny's. I ordered their meatlover's.

Continued our trip. We reached San Francisco around 9. We proceeded directly to the Golden Gate Bridge. There wasn't too many visitors yet at Vista Point. We took several photos. I even met a dog named Ranger whose owner plans to go to Redwoods later on. One thing I noticed, peeps here are more friendly to tourists. They sometimes offer to take our group shots even without asking (unlike the peeps in Baltimore).Next stop was Sausalito. A very quaint village. we found some shops selling souvenir items, paintings and toys. Got a magnet for my collection. There's also a nice map where each State was represented by a license plate. Rad!
Along the way to the Golden Gate earlier, we passed by Palace of Fine Arts. That's where we headed to next. I really enjoyed this place. If Alwyn was here, I'm pretty sure he'd spend hours taking pictures. Such a beautiful architecture! Ogz took some amazing shots of me here.Photo session didn't stop inside the Palace. I did an update of my infamous '99 Central Park shot.


It's time to have lunch. It's past 2 pm already. Gev & Fe recommended a Filipino resto named "Tribu" along El Camino Real. Along the way, I noticed that some houses here in SF resemble the tenement houses in Baguio. Too crowded. And the roads go up and down like rollercoasters. Love it ;oPFinally found "Tribu" after getting lost. Our GPS didn't have info on this resto. We wanna ordered Diniguan but Jesse might not like it. We settled for beef sinigang, grilled squid (Congo Grille still holds the trophy on this), caldereta and ginataang chicken. Am not a fan of gata so I didn't taste it. The food was just okay.

'twas already four when we dropped off Fe & Jesse at their hotel. They stayed at Ramada. Ogz, Gev and I met Kuya Bong and his wife at Clarion hotel. Gev was supposed to stay here but the plan was changed. She went to Doubletree later.

Our room is nice. No free internet though. We've got 2 hours to freshen up. Ogz and I took a nap. The sheets are so soft and comfy. I was dead to the world in an instant.

Woke up at 6:30 and took a quick shower. We're meeting Kuya Bong for dinner in 30 minoots. While waiting for his call, we watched "Road Trip". 'twas already past 7 and we still didn't get a call. Then later on, the phone rang. Kuya Bong instructed us to go downstairs ASAP. We've missed his calls.

Kuya Bong asked us what we wanna have for dinner. We just had Filipino so that was out of the question. We didn't want Chinese either. Kuya Bong took us to Cafe La Scala, an Italian resto in Burlingame.I ordered their New York steak and some salad with cheese & walnuts. The food was delish. We had some red wine too. Perfect! To cap the night, we had coffee at Starbucks. Kuya Bong wanted to take us to Peet's Coffee shop but it was already closed.