Today was a "free" day in that C and I were up to our own devices till we hit our tour with Heidi and Korey at 5.
So what did we do with our free time? Very very little. We were in our room till 2 at least and then decided to venture out for a coffee at Starbucks. I think we were both feeling the burn from so much travel and adventure and just needed some downtime. It was nice actually. We ended up going for a walk after coffee and found the Virgin Megastore, which I love. We have one hear in Vancouver and it is one of the best stores for hard to find stuff. I was looking around for something, anything to read or watch and then I saw it... the League of Extraordinary Gentleman - The Black Dossier, a graphic novel featuring characters I love written by one of my fav comic writers and only ever released in the states! I was so stoked. I grabbed it and was on my way.
When 5 rolled around it was time to meet for our San Francisco Chinatown tour. It was amazing, such a cool little evening adventure. We started out getting to see some of the city on our tour bus, which picked us up from the hotel. It took us a little closer to the Transamerica building, that pointy building in the SF skyline and on to Chinatown. We ate at the Cathay house and it was truly delicious, a great example of American chinese food cooked with actual ingredients and not predone sauces. The egg rolls were unbelievably crispy and tasty, the sweet and sour pork was awesome. We then embarked on a walking tour of North America's oldest Chinatown. We stopped at a Bazaar and I bought a cool red Chinese dragon for my office and a pair of balls... for exercising my hands... to increase dexterity... you know what that is never going to sound right so I am just going to leave it there.
We walked all over the 20 square blocks or so that is Chinatown and what I loved is that we very quickly left behind the tourists on the main drag and headed into the genuine, every day Chinatown. Warmly lit apartments with little clotheslines drying socks, tiny storefronts offering all kinds of exotic medicines, it was really cool. We even went down some of the narrow alleyways, which in and of themselves function as a place of living and business. In an alley and very unassuming we got to see inside a functioning fortune cookie factory about the size of my bedroom. Two ladies working in front of these sort of automated waffle iron things that spat out cookies which they quickly folded into that oh so common shape. It was such a different world that what I know, and it was a little humbling to see how close knit and loving this community was. In the distance, somewhere in this neighborhood you could here traditional chinese music playing, and definitely by real people. This was my favorite journey of our entire vacation.
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