You didn't mention Arsicault to me, but our Airbnb hosts left a very helpful list of Richmond spots, so I hit that up first thing... I got there right before opening, and I think I was still like 30th-40th in line! But it moved quickly enough, and the munchies were very good.
Taqueria Cancun was DAMN good, as expected. I was shocked by how quickly the food came out... like, seriously, less than 30 seconds!
I guess to kind of cap off the rundown of all the stuff we did...
Tuesday was a Sausalito day. I'd been there before, but my wife flippin' loved it, and we ate the Spinnaker, which had some killer views and solid food. Went to a bar called Bocce Bar that lets you sit on their little beach with your drinks, so that was sweet! Ferried back to the city and did an all-too-brief walk through North Beach. Honestly didn't get to take it in as much I would have liked, but we ate at Italian Homemade Co., which was so relaxed and casual (love getting served paper plates!) but damn good pasta.
Also hit up City Lights, which I had been really looking forward to. Grabbed a handful of books and made sure to snag some poetry and Beat-related stuff, just to mark the occasion (picked up Ferlinghetti's "Little Boy," a copy of "Howl," a Rimbaud collection, among other things).
By the way, I didn't mention Green Apple yet, but we hit that up twice, and I didn't buy anything (honestly, I was kind of overwhelmed by the place!), but my wife got some swag, and I'm a big fan. Would have loved to browse through there a few more times, and it's kinda crazy that they used to have a whole other store space...
On Wednesday, we did a big walking day again, climbed all up through Pacific Heights and checked out the real estate and parks up there. That was really the first bit of intense hill climbing we'd done, and it was a cool experience. Went down the hill to Japantown and went to a place called Marufuku Ramen, which was AMAZING. My wife wanted to get some jewelry on Hayes St., and then we did the obligatory Full House bullsh*t (I resisted the best I could)...
finally, a long-awaited Amoeba run! I came away with, I think, 9 records... including some you would dig like Blackheart Man and Arthur Verocai. I actually checked another bag on the plane solely to hold all the books and records I was planning on picking up. I'd been into the store before, but this was my first haul from there... very satisfying.
That evening, we did an absurdly expensive fine dining experience at a place downtown called Benu. This was a bit of a shot in the dark, and the cost was... ahem, ABSURD... but we decided it would be a cool experience for our honeymoon and went for it. The food basically looked like artwork but was overall very tasty... it's Korean-oriented, and I didn't always really know what I was eating, especially the seafood, but we were there for three hours and had a solid time... very attentive service. Not quite sure it's worth the $$, but an interesting occasion...
The last day, we kept it lower-key and walked through Golden Gate Park some more. Hit up Haight St. again so my wife could get touristy crap, then ate at Cha Cha Cha, which unfortunately was out of limes (WTF!) so I couldn't sample the great-looking cocktails, but the food was excellent. That night we went to Fiorella in the Richmond for some pizza and capped things off with a walk through Sea Cliff and got down to China Beach right at sunset, quite by accident -- very beautiful (and oppressively wealthy!) over in that area; so damn quiet!
Hahah, so that's plenty of info for you! We really had an awesome time. Boston feels boring (and flat) in comparison right now. We really only barely scratched the surface of the food scene, and there's a lot of areas I wanted to check out (or explore more thoroughly)... I think we'd probably be willing to do the same Airbnb again if we made the trip out in the future.
Anyway, thanks again for your (and Nick's) help -- it was a great way for me to get brainstorming on things before the trip, so we were very prepped and organized with lots of different planned-out itineraries to choose from.
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