Our Honeymoon, Chinatown Edition

Our story resumes...

After our stop at the Redwoods, Husby and I drove down the mountain through immensely thick fog. (Okay, it could have been a really steep hill, but I'm pretty sure it was a small mountain. With a winding road and no guardrails.)

San Francisco is known for fog. And we witnessed it. We saw signs for the Golden Gate Bridge and kept thinking that we'd see it. Soon enough, we spotted the very tip of it. It was the only part visible. It was a little eerie driving across it! I kept thinking of the sharks that must be waiting on some unlucky driver to plunge into the icy cold below. And then praying that it wasn't us. (I so didn't want to die on our honeymoon!)

We arrived at The Palace Hotel, and it was fabulous! We received two nights at The Palace for a wedding gift. We were so blessed! Our room was huge. This is the Garden Court, visible when you first walk inside the hotel.

On our first day in San Fran, our first stop was Chinatown. The sights and smells were of a different country. Here we are in front of the Chinatown gate.

Evidently, this is Chinatown's first bakery. I'm sure it's like Ray's Pizza in NYC--44 of them all claim to be the original Ray's. Even though we'd just eaten breakfast, I wanted something from the bakery. But after a quick inspection, I couldn't bring myself to have a pastery filled with lotus or black beans.

A cat across the street from the bakery. He was quite content and eventually had enough of me and turned to go inside.

I just had to go inside the markets. Everything was so different! Things in jars and boxes that smelled and looked funny. And dried fish and shrimp and ducks in the finest of displays.

A couple of days later, we decided to cut through Chinatown on the way to Fisherman's Wharf. Only this time, we didn't go through the touristy-commercialized route. The culture was completely different. We were surrounded by people living their lives, rather than shops with purses and sunglasses. We were so glad that we were able to see this part of their culture.

Stay tuned for more...