San Francisco Adventure for Beer Week!

Your mom got me a wonderful Christmas present last year, tickets to the Opening Gala of San Francisco Beer Week, and now it was time to cash in! So, we made it into one amazing adventure, spending a couple nights in the wild city that is the heart of the Bay.

We started out by visiting, The Mill, a cool little coffee shop and bakery your mom had researched and was definitely right up her alley. I've been trying out some of the fancier coffee's and drinking them on their own, and I'm definitely expanding my appreciation for what coffee can be. This place had some good stuff. 

We always appreciate the distinct architecture of this town, streets lines with Victorian and Edwardian style homes in the northern parts near the Marina District and Russian Hill. 

I warmed up for the big event that night by checking out a new brewery I hadn't heard of yet, Woods Brewery. 

Your mom promptly found the Russian Hill Bookstore across the street. 

And then it was time! The gala was held at Fort Mason Center, a huge old Navy complex. The gala was to kick off 2015 San Francisco Beer Week, a week dedicated to cool beer events across the city. 

The Bay Area brewery scene has quite literally exploded in the past ten years, many of these places opening only in the last few years. There were around 100 breweries represented, all pouring samples of their brews into our commemorative tasting glasses. It was a blast! 

The next morning we cruised around the Marina District, eventually stumbling into this nifty joint, The Tipsy Pig. It had a gorgeous, classic interior and this pretty rear patio. The food was also quite amazing. It was one of those meals where all you can talk about is how good every bite is. 

San Francisco offers endless opportunities for someone walking with a camera to take pretty cityscapes. 

With serendipitous timing, your mom's cousin Jennifer was back in the area after six months living abroad in London! We were pretty envious of her experience, and she told us all about here amazing time. I think Jennifer is the only person I know who's Anglophilia rivals your mom's. 

Jennifer showed us to a cool old-fashioned diner run by young hipsters in the Mission District, known for murals, Mission Revival architecture, and the lingering smell of pot all throughout. 

Relaxing over what we thought was our last sit-down of the trip, we got a wild idea to stay one more night. It didn't take much convincing for either of us, so we found some last minute accommodations in a absolutely stunning boutique hotel in Union Square. This was the view from the 11th floor room. 

The room was swanky and had a lot of style that your mom really enjoys. We parked the car, and went downstairs for drinks, meeting a cool bartender who introduced me to some new cocktails german to the Bay Area. We hopped across the street for Sushi Boat, experimenting with quail eggs and octopus sashimi. Oddly enough, another friend of ours, Kelley, happened to be in the city a a birthday party, so after midnight we hopped into a cab to join them for dancing. It turned out to be quite the adventurous night! 

The last couple times we've been in the city, we didn't have time to get to the Aquarium on the Bay. We'd been drawn there by the new otter exhibit. There is no understating how much you mom adores river otters.

The otter show was a ways off, so we browsed around and met this very curious bat ray in the touching pool. He kept bobbing his head up like this, and the presenter said it was because that's the only way he can see what's going on above the water's surface.

And this is Baxter, the playful, energetic one of the small bunch of male river otters. When we showed up, he was swimming laps.

Then he dried off. The presenter said otters often struggle to groom in between their outer and inner layers of fur, and Baxter here was rubbing himself all over everything in an effort to do so.

I think he was scratching an itch!

Before the actual otter training session, we walked around some more and met this pygmy hedgehog, aptly named Sega. He was a bit scared, I think.

Then we went downstairs to see some of the other exhibits, including these jellyfish, which are always such a sight.

This tunnel leads under the actual bay and includes a glimpse into the real ecosystem.

We ooh'd and ahh'd and giggled over the otters, Baxter, Shasta, and Ryer, during their training exhibit. Here all the boys were rough-housing a bit.

Before we set off, we absorbed some more of the San Francisco sights around Fisherman's Wharf. It's never tiring, especially when the sun gets low and everything starts to glow.

 

We reminisced over our very first visit here together to see the sea lions those years ago.

 

 

We took the long way home and stopped over the Golden Gate in Sausalito for an evening coffee and some ice cream, now longing to get back to our cats who were probably wondering where we'd been (though probably not really wondering at all).