Wes & Erica's Vacation Photo Album - San Francisco, CA (Chinatown) - August 2022

One part of our vacation that Wes & I were equally excited for was San Francisco's Chinatown. We were both anticipating all the delicious food (although I didn't get to eat as much as I had hoped to), and I was pumped for all the shopping. We left the hotel early to get a full day of sightseeing in and realized as soon as the Uber dropped us off that Chinatown's sleepy shops don't open until 10am. 😑 We wandered around and window shopped for about an hour. We went into the visitor's center as soon as it opened to get a map and picked out all the things we wanted to see and do.

We spent most of our time just walking around and looking at all the murals. There were so many!! I also loved all of the decorations on the buildings. We got a little turned around, so I think we walked around the same blocks over & over again. LOL It got busy pretty quickly and we were soon surrounded by a ton of other tourists, as well as locals. It was so weird hearing snippets of everyone's conversations in Cantonese. I used to speak it fluently, but I'm embarrassed to admit that I've forgotten about 50% of it (even though it's technically my native tongue) 😅

We went into a handful of souvenir shops; got something for our house, my mom & stepdad, and that was the extent of our buying. I really wanted a pair of jellies, but the shop didn't have them in my size. 😞 And I'm not completely sure they were for sale; they didn't have a price tag and they were the only pair sitting on a shelf of slippers. I also wanted a zodiac stuffed animal of a Rat (1984, baby!! 🐀) but I couldn't think of a place to put it, so I passed on it as well. Travelling with just one carry-on bag (and no checked luggage) is not conducive to souvenir shopping. Wes isn't a shopper and I quickly discovered that all of the shops sell almost the exact same thing, so we didn't buy much. I think it was more fun to just walk around and look at everything. 

There were a handful of things we wanted to see while we were in Chinatown. One was the Tin How Temple. I thought it was a tourist attraction that you could go into, but it's only open to members. It did look very nice on the outside, though.

After "visiting" the temple, we switched gears and headed for the St. Mary's Cathedral. ⛪ We got in at the tail end of midday mass. I'm glad we didn't barge in at the middle of mass or during communion. Wes isn't religious, and while I was raised Catholic, I don't practice anymore. We stayed toward the back while the priest finished up and then the church opened up to visitors. 

The Cathedral was the first in the Chinatown area and it's endured some natural disasters. You can tell from the inside that it definitely is old and has been through some rough patches. There was damage to the ceiling and some stained-glass windows. But it is a beautiful church. 

We were so lucky with timing the whole day. We got seated & served at the dim sum restaurant just before the lunch rush started, we got to the cathedral right as mass was ending, and we beat the line at the fortune cookie factory. I don't think we waited in line for anything. 👍

I normally don't like fortune cookies and give them to Athena & Zephyr when we get Chinese take-out, but the fresh ones from the fortune cookie factory were so good! 🥠 The fortune cookie factory was at the end of a very narrow alley. We walked by a few times and kept missing the turn into Ross alley. Ross alley is one of the notable ones in Chinatown (I think just because it's old). The factory was tiny! It had a gift shop at the front, the employees working on display in the back, then you make a U-turn and get a free fortune cookie on your way out. It was one of my favorite things we saw all day even though the "tour" took less than 5-minutes. LOL

I saw a Chinese American heritage museum on the directory at the visitor's center and added that to our list of places to visit. I also saw a bunch of signs for a Bruce Lee exhibit. For some reason I didn't put the two together until we got into the museum. The first exhibit (unrelated to Bruce Lee) was a textile exhibit. The dresses are made from shopping bags and some other materials--don't remember what and I also forgot the artist's intent. 🤷 I expected there to be some historical exhibits, but the rest of the museum was dedicated to the Bruce Lee exhibition. 

I am aware of the cultural phenomenon and significance of Bruce Lee, but I haven't seen any of his movies all the way through, and I didn't know much about him as a person. It was cool to read up on him and see all the movie memorabilia. The exhibit also had some of his original artwork and writings. Wes likes Bruce Lee's movies and seemed to enjoy the museum. 

We finished up Chinatown a few hours before our dinner reservation so we Uber'd to Japantown. 🎎 Our Uber was a Tesla, which I'm sure is completely normal but I was impressed. LOL It's probably the hippest vehicle I've ridden in. I didn't know how to use the door handles, so our driver had to roll down the window and instruct me. 😅 San Francisco is as hilly as everyone says it is and traffic was madness, so I am so glad we decided to Uber and walk everywhere instead of renting a car. Anyway, Japantown is basically two malls with a pavilion in the middle. One of the malls has a majority of the shops and the other mall has a majority of the restaurants (and the MUCH cleaner restrooms). We mostly wanted to go to Japantown for the Kinokuniya bookstore. It is the first one in the States. We always go to the one in Carrollton, TX. This one is supposed to be way bigger with a ton more stuff but I wasn't impressed. Probably because I don't read manga or play video games. LOL Wes liked it and bought 2 video game art books. I like the store for its cute stationary and kitschy stuff, which it didn't have as much as I had hoped it would. We walked all around the malls and went into quite a few shops. One was Amiko...an authorized tokidoki retailer. Oh my freakin' gawd!!! 😲😁😍 I was in heaven. I wanted to buy it all, but I exercised self-control and only bought my traditional souvenir of a Unicorno figurine. 

I know the Guo Pei fashion exhibit at the art museum should be my favorite day in San Francisco since that is the reason why I booked this vacation, but I think my favorite day was our day in Chinatown. It was so neat to just walk around and see everything. My favorite parts of Chinatown were the fortune cookie factory, the mural of the Manchurian warriors, our meal at 8 tables, and Amiko boutique (okay, that was in Japantown). Wes said our day in Chinatown was awesome and I suspect it was his favorite part of our vacation as well. And here is a random picture of our hotel (right in the most "beautiful part of San Francisco" as our first Uber driver sarcastically told us), because I have nowhere else to put it in this blog. 😅

Wes & Erica go to Tampa, FL, part 2

December was a trying month (but we don't need to talk about that..), regardless, I am determined to travel on my birthday no matter what, and I wanted to celebrate another completed craft show season, so off to Florida we went!! 🌞 I think we did a little less than we usually do when we travel but we both still enjoyed the trip. We only went to three activities -

Coppertail Brewing Night Market-
Coppertail is a local brewery in Ybor, FL. Every second Friday evening, the brewery opens its back parking lot to crafters and artisans for a night market. This was a really fun event with good customer turnout, Oklahoma breweries take note (and allow RagsReborn to be a vendor 😉). There was a good variety of vendors--about 30-40 of them--and they were all handmade. The weather was amazing - 70℉, cool with no wind. The only weird thing was that not many of the vendors were selling Florida themed stuff. I was surprised there wasn't any tshirts, stickers or any of the other usual crafty items with the state outline of Florida printed on them. There was a local rescue there with a litter of eight-week old boxer/German shepherd puppies. They were so cute in their Christmas bandannas! There was only one food truck at the market (they preferred that everyone eat in the taproom but it was PACKED and I was too hungry to wait in line). The food truck was a pizza one. They made our pizzas to order in a little portable brick oven. We ordered a margherita pizza but it didn't have basil. I instantly didn't like it for that reason, that and the crust was burnt. We also got beers (of course, we were at a brewery!). Wes ordered a Day Swim, a coffee & vanilla porter that was pretty good and tasted as expected. I got the Florida Special, which was just your average blonde beer. Nothing special about the beers but the night market was worth going to.

Tampa Art Museum-
The art museum was pretty good but also really small. It was only one floor and we went through it all in about an hour. The gift shop was bigger and had more interesting stuff than the museum did. LOL Wes really liked the Greek & Roman vessels and other statuettes (above). He liked the use of the color black in the artifacts. My favorite thing at the museum was the mummy. Well, it was only a sarcophagus. When the explorers found it, there was no mummy inside. I think if there is a mummy in a museum, it will always be my favorite part of the museum. The drawings on the sarcophagus were really detailed and told an intricate story but I've forgotten it now.

The special exhibit at the museum was a collection of Haitian voodoo flags. They were much more colorful and bejeweled than I thought they'd be (but I know literally nothing about Haitian culture or voodoo so who am I to judge). All of the flags were decorated using either beads or sequins. Many of them depicted St. Jacques who was the leader of the Haitian revolution.

The Florida Aquarium-
The aquarium was amazing and completely worth going to if you ever are in Tampa. The place was gigantic with eight different areas to explore. There was a really good variety of animals and sea life to view. We started in the wetlands section and wandered all the way through to the "Dragons of the Sea" section (my favorite), we skipped the splash pad and 4-D movie theater even though they were included in our ticket. We saw everything from birds to jelly fish to lemurs to lobsters. The wetlands section had all of the birds flying free instead of in cages, which I thought was rad even if we got splashed by a hooded merganser duck several times (like literally each time he swam by us) and almost got shat on by a roseate spoonbill bird. LOL Wes's favorite animal - the snowy egret bird - was in the wetlands, too.

A lot of the exhibits were interactive. I got to "pet" a jelly fish, star fish and a sea anemone. I would have also touched a stingray but he didn't swim close enough to me. An aquarium worker randomly brought out a penguin for us to see (but not touch). The aquarium has a few penguins but they aren't on display, yet. They live in the back for now. My favorite creature (and probably my new favorite animal, sorry okapi) was the leafy seadragon. This thing looks insane and astounding at the same time. It was a medium sized seahorse with branches growing out of it! Just look at it!! Extraordinary!

So that's a wrap for Tampa. If you go, try to go on the second Friday of the month so you can visit the night market. Plan to spend several hours at the aquarium (we probably spent 3-4 hours there). We went on a Monday so it wasn't crowded. You can probably skip the art museum. I didn't mention it but we also took a stroll along the Riverwalk. It was a nice two-mile walk. You start at the art museum and end up at Armatage Works. We spent a day in St. Petersburg as well, more on that next week!