Day Two

Samurai armor at the Asian Art Museum.
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The day started off with breakast - lunch, actually - at Cafe de la Presse, a little french café that must get overlooked quite a bit since it sits across the street from the Chinatown dragon gate. Chowed down on a fantastic open-faced sandwich with strips of roast duck and arugula while tapping into the free Wifi on my laptop from the hotel next door.

Next was a stop to the Brookstone in the brand new Westfield Mall on Market Street. No, I wasn't in need of a glass CD player that also cooks breakfast.. I needed a couple minutes in one of the massage chairs to fix my back which had gotten all messed up from the flight and from sleeping on Travis' floor. I'm not really a fan of malls (I have to walk through one just to get to the train station every day), but Westfield was nice. Like, gold-plated grand-staircase-style escalators nice.

Night falls on San Francisco.
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I grabbed a Jamba Juice on the way out (CHEAP! in California) and strolled down Market Street towards the civic center and the Asian Art Museum. With the exception of the sign that I missed that says "start on the third floor and work your way down", the Asian Art Museum is a museum done right. If you start in the correct place, you'll be led through the regions and history of asia with a lot of emphasis on trade and religion, particularly Buddhisim. The samurai armor on the second floor gave me chills.

With a few hours to kill before a show at the Fillmore, I chilled out for a while at Golden Gate Perk, a little coffeeshop that feels like the lounge of a youth hostel but serves Korean-inspired food, including a killer BBQ pork sandwich. I took full advantage of the free WiFi and got a little bit of work done (yeah, I'm a freak like that).

Met up with Travis and we jumped on the bus to Fillmore, where I had tickets to Yo La Tengo at the Fillmore Theater. Got there a little early so we grabbed dinner at Pride of the Mediterranean, a hookah bar/middle eastern restaurant. Skipped the hookah, but my chicken dish was decent and the ice tea was amazing - weird how something that simple can be done so well.

On to the show... we arrived at the Fillmore as the opening act was wrapping up, which gave us some time to explore the place. This must be the coolest rock venue, anywhere. The main floor is adorned with crystal chandeliers and the rest of the place is plastered with posters of every band that's ever played there. Grateful Dead, Led Zepplin, Steve Miller Band, Tom Petty and seemlingly thousands of others... we wandered around in awe of how many acts have passed through the Fillmore. After the show I picked up Yo La Tengo's poster for the show and held on to it like gold (evidently, Fillmore posters are collectors items).