My first trip to the US.

Fishermen Wharf - Pier 39

Dungeness Crabs

Pearl from my chosen oyster!

Returned from a 5-day trip to San Francisco exactly a week ago and is finally feeling better today to be able to get some school work done and also do some blogging. I caught a terrible cold in SF...

SF's trip was a "been there, did that" kind of trip. Have heard so much good things about SF but have not been there or anywhere in the US, so I decided that maybe it's time to take a trip and see for myself what's the big deal about the US. Hubby was half-hearted about the trip, he would prefer going to Japan instead but he was accommodating, especially since we probably won't be able to go anywhere with me starting the IVF cycle soon...

The weather was terrible in SF, it was chilly, rainy and really nothing like how I'd imagined it to be. We would probably had enjoyed the trip much better if the weather had been better. Anyway, we went to all the must-see places; we went to the Fishermen Wharf, saw the Alcatraz from there, ate the famous Dungeness crabs, watched the lazy sea lions at Pier 39, picked an oyster to get my very first pearl...

We rode the famous cable cars up and town the hilly streets of SF, went to Chinatown and Japantown, and had a very long walk at the Golden Gate Park where there were lots of beautiful Cherry Blossoms trees. At Union Square, we shopped at Victoria Secrets, Macy's and Nordstrom. I really like it that people can bring their dogs everywhere in the city, even into departmental stores! In Hong Kong, we can't even keep pet dogs in public housing and most private apartments! And dogs are out of bounds to most parks! Crazy!

Chinatown

Japan Town

Victoria's Secret

Anyway, the highlight of our trip was probably the morning when we joined the queue to buy our iPads on the opening day at the Apple store. There were 2 lines, one for the reservations and one for the walk-ins, and of course we belong to the walk-in line...we were told that the reservation line will be given priority to go in once the store opened at 9am and we will be going in later. Nevertheless, we managed to get into the store by 10:30am and walked out with our iPads at 11am! We were very pleased with the service at Apple, they served us Krispy Kreme donuts and Starbucks coffee while we were queueing, and we get our very own salesperson and technical instructor inside the store! One thing that really impressed me about the trip to the US was the service quality of the service staff everywhere and most of the people were friendly. There were many homeless beggars and crook-looking blacks in the streets that spoilt the otherwise perfect image of a metropolitan city though...