honey-mooning -- day 5

Woke up early this morning, looking forward to getting out and enjoying the sunny day! Hopped a bus near our hotel and rode it out to the Golden Gate park. The ride took a while, but allowed for lots of interesting people-watching!

Once we reached the park, we explored the botanical gardens. They are immense and beautiful! There are numerous different gardens, with plants native to certain parts of the world such as New Zealand, and Chile arranged in sections – so you could wander from one part of the world to another (botanically speaking) in a matter of minutes! It was neat to see how the differences and also the commonalities in plants throughout the world.

Our next stop was the Japanese Tea Garden. It was just amazing, containing a waterfall, pagoda, ponds, bridges and even a little tea house overlooking a stream. It was truly a peaceful place. I could have spent hours there! But we were excited to keep moving on and seeing more of the beautiful gardens.

Wandering along we came to the conservatory gardens. We decided not to tour the conservatory itself, just the grounds. There were huge gardens with colorful arrangements of annuals, creating diamonds and other geometric shapes using different colors and plant types. There was also a huge dahlia garden with more varieties of dahlias than I even knew existed! They are so interesting and other-wordly! Some of the dahlias were big, colorful balls, others were spikey orbs and still others were more delicate yet, with a spiral of wispy petals flowing out from the center.

On a hill near the conservatory we stopped to admire a garden of succulents and enjoy the vista. The sun was starting to intensify and it felt wonderful basking in its heat.

We walked the remainder of the garden, loosely following JFK drive until we came to Haight street. We stopped at Amoeba Records to shop for used CDs then holed up in a wonderful little Mexican place for tacos and burritos. The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering down Haight street, popping in on various vintage stores, clothing stores and of course, the Fluevog shoe store.

Returning toward home, we took a bus down to Market street and 4th street, near Union Square. We did more window shopping in some of the upscale boutiques and specialty stores such as Betsey Johnson, Paul Frank and Puma. By this time our feet were getting tired so we headed back to our hotel to do some quick research on restaurants for dinner.

We ended up picking an Indonesian restaurant near our hotel for dinner and it was wonderful! For an appetizer we shared roti (a buttery bread), which came with a dipping sauce that tasted like coconut milk and curry. It was divine! I ordered ginger tea, which was spicy and sweet – a perfect balance. Chris got the Thai iced tea, which was strong and rich, mixed with condensed milk or cream.

For dinner, I got a huge bowl of lemon grass soup, which had noodles, chicken and egg as well as plenty of green onion and garlic. Just what I needed to warm me up as the night grew chilly! Chris ordered a sweet and sour Tempeh and Tofu dish that had a bit of smoky, bar-be-que flavor and was loaded with tasty green beans and tomatoes. We were really pleased!

Finally, we experience a bit of San Francisco night-life! We went to the Tonga room, one of San Francisco’s original Tiki bars, which opened in the 1940’s. They serve tasty but not overly strong tiki drinks and best of all there is a rain shower INSIDE the restaurant every half hour. There is a pool in the center of the restaurant with a “boat” floating in the middle (where bands perform) and surrounding the pool is a porch, with tables that have straw canopies and on the other side it looks like a porch with a thatched roof. We sat at the bar so that we’d have a good view of the pool/boat for the rain shower. (The rain only occurs over the pool – so no one gets wet!) It was really neat!

We also stopped by Harry Denton’s Starlight lounge before heading home. The starlight lounge is on the 21st floor of the Sir Francis Drake hotel and has huge windows with expansive views of the San Francisco skyline. It was really foggy tonight – making it mysterious and fun to watch the fog drifting between the buildings/sky scrapers. It was also good people watching as they have a dance floor and live band. Tonight the band was playing funk music and there was quite a crowd dancing and having a good time. It was fun to watch and even better to step out onto the dance floor for a while too!