Family I never new existed...

Left to Up to Right to Down: Me, Gil, Dave, Christine, Tuyet
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So I met my mum’s older sister for the first time and boy does she ever look as good as my mum. HAHA. No really, I literally thought my mum was letting me in they look almost like twins too. Well the first day I spent with my Uncle, he drove me around some tourist sites. After hearing stories of the misty fog in San Francisco and times when the city is covered in fog that you can’t even see the Golden Gate bridge the perfect weather just seemed to be following me wherever I was going.

The MOFO sign at the Breast Cancer Research Walk
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Our first stop was the world famous red in colour, Golden Gate Bridge. As amazing as it looks, the amount of work that was put into this Bridge was sheer brilliance. The bridge is constructed with thousands of cables each weighing over 24000 tons and within each cable was a foundation individual strand of solid metal wires. Peering into the distance of the bay, lied Alcatraz the supposedly escape proof jail completely surrounded by water built for the most notorious convicts such as Al Capone. Also the mystery escape masterminded by Frank Morris still remains a mystery today towards whether or not it was successful as no bodies have been reported found. Following this site, we took a ride to the Palace of Fine Arts designed for the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exhibition, but over the last few decades it had started to crumble and fall apart and has since been restored and remains as one of San Francisco’s most enduring icons. Then to San Francisco’s well known Pier 39 at Fisherman’s wharf where you can buy a beer wrapped in a brown paper bag and drink it on the streets. But don’t be mistaken as it has much more to offer from entertaining buskers, lines of market stalls, fresh seafood filled restaurants, desserts stores, souvenier stores and a lot more. This definitely was one of my most favorite places to visit in San Francisco.

Golden Gate Cable
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Including in the ever more tourist sites to follow such as a drive through Chinatown, downtown San Francisco, and the City Town Hall, it was time to head back home. Where, I met my cousin Nghi, his wife and 2 kids, Tiffany and Jonathan. Then later on, I also met my cousins Tuyet and Christine who I got along with like a house on fire, need I also say WHO I never even knew existed until today. I don’t know why, but mum never mentioned anything about them. Otherwise I would have been over here long ago. I also met Dave(the adopted half brother, reason being my Auntie has been baby sitting him since he was as little as 3), Gil(Christine’s boyfriend) and the cute dogs Palmer and Bauer(yep, from the TV series 24). However, I didn’t get the chance to meet Tuyet’s beloved husband Juan, who is in the Marine Corp away on a mission. But I’m sure I’ll get to meet him in the near future. So over the next few days, this was the crew with whom I had such a blast with.

The dude who designed it
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Tuyet and Christine brought me to many more sights with some of my favorite being the worlds curviest road Lombard St. It is a one way St running left to right down a hill like a snake with houses on the either side and trees and flowers planted everywhere else like a huge garden. Then there was the Coit Tower, a tall rounded building that looked like a mini coliseum where you can take in the beautiful city views of San Francisco and the bay with both the Golden Gate and Bay Bridge. Looking down on the city from above, it looked like the city was riding a Mexican wave as many of the roads were hills going from up to down throughout the city. But not only did the Coit tower offered the panoramic views of the beautiful city, a place high above the hills of San Francisco about 30 minutes away from the hustle and bustle of the city was the Twin Peaks, offering an even more spectacular view of the entire span of the city, day or night, both as equally as majestic and overtly breathtaking. Then Haight and Ashbury Street brought a totally different side to San Francisco, culturally hippy influenced and known to attract more of a scraggly rugged artsy crowd. There were stores after stores of unique clothing boutiques with other random stores and restaurants. Then how can you not ride the Cable Car and hang off the side like you see in the old school TV show Full House. It just had to be done and it was an amazing experience, hanging onto the side bars with half of your body hanging out with cars passing you by. It was more of a rollercoaster ride with all the hilly roads in San Francisco. A must do!

No Fog, Golden Gate
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Aside from the endless amount of tourist sights that have not been mentioned, Tuyet, Christine, Dave, Gil and I took the dogs for the Breast Cancer Research Walk. Which was pretty fun, we ended up getting some T-Shirts as well as having a bit of fun with a Team MOFO sign that we saw in the gathering area for the walk. Now, I can honestly say that after leaving home, I haven’t eaten as good as I have down in San Francisco, the girls would order like massive amounts of food and then take a few bites and then get the boys to finish it off as well as our own meals. It was GREAT, I wasn’t complaining, but I sure did have a full stomach every night. I tried my first South American cuisine at a restuarant that I forgot the name of but, I had Salmon with some tasty sauce and mashed chic peas. It was delicious. Then my insisted fresh seafood night at Scoma’s and boy was it ever deliciously fresh Seafood. We had to wait for like an hour before we sat down but once we did we ordered and I relentlessly devoured my taste buds with huge chunks of the Dungeness crab. It was also pretty funny because we all pretended it was my birthday and I ended up getting Happy Birthday sung to me by some opera singing waiter and a free desert. Then with the last night ending dinner at the Steps of Rome with mouth watering pasta dishes but what topped it off was the home made Tira Misu dessert cake, soft as marshmallows which seemed to melt in your mouth with each bite. I also thought about pretending it to be my birthday but then we witnessed a girl on another table celebrating her birthday and what happens is the lights get dimmed to mood lighting then the waiter drags the girl and sits her down on another chair and followed by some very raunchy dancing between the waiter and the birthday girl and followed by whip crème spread all over the girls lips and neck and what not before the waiter gets the privilege to lick it all off of her. That lucky bugger! And that is when I decided it wasn’t my birthday that day!

Postcard Pic or what
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Next Stop, LA.