Chinatown and Marin

We actually went to Chinatown briefly on the 4th of July, but it was a short visit so we went back again today. The highlight was definitely dim sum breakfast this morning, but we were too busy stuffing our faces to take pictures.

Us with the famous Chinatown gate. It was hard to get a picture because it is an active street.

San Francisco's Chinatown is the largest one outside of Asia, so although it felt similar to the ones we've been to in Boston, NY, and Philly, it just went on and on and on.

Lanterns everywhere!

The sun made this picture hard to take, but this is a Citibank.

Not a warning sign you would see in many other places.

Besides dim sum, the other neat thing we did was visit a fortune cookie factory. The warm discs of dough come off a pressing machine to the right, then the workers grab them, pick up a fortune from the pile, and fold them over a small rod into their characteristic shape. They had broken cookie scraps for you to snack on, and the whole street smelled like fortune cookies.

The pile of money is from people taking photos.

After dim sum, we walked down to the Embarcadero, stopping along the way to take some obligatory tourist pictures.

Ben, a fountain, palm trees, and the ferry building.

We caught the ferry over to Marin, where some of our friends live. The view from the ferry is really excellent, but the only picture we took is of me holding an old plate, because it is indestructible and has been around the world on many camping adventures in the family, so my mom mailed it to us and asked us to take a picture with it in front of a San Francisco landmark. And if you look closely, you'll see that the Golden Gate Bridge is indeed visible in the background.

It was really windy.

Actually I guess we took two pictures; this one is of the "roller coaster bridge."

Our Marin friends asked us if we wanted to go paddle boarding with them, and I thought that was the thing where you lie down on a board and kick around in the water, so I said yes. It turns out that it's a much scarier thing where you stand up on a board and paddle yourself around, but we did it anyway and I didn't even fall over (although I did spend half the time on my knees being too nervous to stand up). We didn't take the camera with us because it isn't waterproof, but we did take a picture of us all on the dock afterward.

I am happy because I'm relieved to be back on solid land.

We also had board game night on Friday, visited other friends in Fremont yesterday, and had dinner and ice cream with yet another set of friends tonight - this Bay Area social scene is wearing us out! We only have a few weeks left until we head back to Philly, where we'll take a week-long nap to make up for all this excessive summer fun.