Today was our first official fun day in San Francisco. It was also the first day we did not work on a “project” for the house. Hooray!
We set out around noon for the 39th Annual Nihonmachi festival in Japantown. There were a variety of craft tables, beautiful ceramics, and food trucks. For lunch we went with some tasty seafood ramen noodles with shrimp tempura on top. This went perfectly with the bag of Japanese candy that we bought a few minutes later. We got fruit gummies, chocolate covered pretzels shaped like mushrooms, and of course some Pocky sticks. Walking through a stationary store nearby really brought back memories of going to school in Japan. All of the fancy mechanical pencils and the erasers shaped like mini bento boxes. I even found the erasers that smell like different kinds of soda! After watching several performances of Hawaiian and Tahitian hula, we hopped on the bus back to our apartment.
Ever since I got to San Francisco, Ashwin has been promising that we’ll go to the pier and see the sea lions. Snickers decided today was the day, so she got her coat and we all piled into the car. Driving north, it was clear that this was a tourist hot spot. I was expecting just a pier, literally a dock. Instead, this was a full out boardwalk with 3 levels of wooden board floors. Luckily, dogs were allowed seemingly everywhere. Moving through the crowd got tricky at times, but often people were too busy staring at the “Lassie dog” to care if we squeezed by them.
Our first stop was to see the sea lions. About twenty lazy mammals stretched out on square floating docks in front of a crowd of people taking pictures from the dock. We held the dogs up so they could check them out. When the first sea lion made a noise, Meeko’s ears went straight forward. She was definitely interested! We were both hoping that Snickers would growl at the sea lions, but she just watched from her perch in Ashwin’s arms.
After exploring some of the boardwalk, Snickers was getting tired and refusing to walk at our pace. Ashwin graciously agreed to carry her for the rest of the time. As you can see in the pictures, Queen Snickers was perfectly happy to relax upside down in Ashwin’s arms. Such a baby! On our walk back to the car she was putting smiles on many faces.
I am really excited to begin exploring more of the city. In other news, I finally found a good Pho place walking distance from our apartment in Chinatown!