Sunday, January 11, 2009

Happy Birthday to Me!!

All of last week I was planning a dinner and drinks at a dive bar. However, what I didn't know was that Justyn was planning a surprise trip to SF for me! On Thursday, Justyn told me that I needed to pack for a couple days. I was like "what??".. I didn't even think he could pull this off but he did! I was shocked and definitely surprised!


We arrived in SF at Le Meridian Hotel around 9:00pm. We checked in and got to our hotel room (on the 23rd floor!) to put down our stuff..



We were both starving so we went to the restaurant/pub right across the street called Elephant & Castle. I ordered the shepherd's pie (technically cottage pie since it was made with beef) and Justyn got yorkshire pudding stuffed with roast beef. The food didn't even come out hot.. it was luke warm at best and they didn't even have HP sauce! You can't have a British restaurant without HP sauce. After dinner we went straight to bed. Well, Justyn fell asleep really fast while I stayed up and watched a program on what there is to do in SF. I felt kinda ashamed since I live in San Jose, but know nothing about what to do and where to go in SF.



The next day we woke up a tad early to go get dim sum. I took some pictures of what we had but my camera's batter ran out right then. That means there are no pictures for the rest of Saturday. At least I can tell you what we ended up doing. After dim sum we went back to the hotel to grab my sunglasses and then we grabbed a cab ride to Union Square. We shopped a little and then found Lefty O'Douls. I heard about this place from the program I watched at the hotel. We went in for a drink. Or two... or actually 3! We chatted up the bartender and joked with one of the locals. The bartender ended up making me something called a Vodka Fizz which consists of sweet & sour, vodka, Maraschino cherry and 7up. I don't like sweet drinks so this was perfect. The bartender topped off my drink with leftover Fizz so that was nice.



We walked down an alleyway and found the Fortune Cookie Factory. The chick closest to me was not happy about me snapping pictures of her haha.. She scowled at me so as soon as I was done taking the picture, I ran away.



After a nice buzz, we did some more shopping at H&M. Justyn bought a cool denim blazer and I got a khaki skirt. I felt bad for Justyn since he's not huge into shopping so we went back to the bar and got some more drinks. We both ended up getting kinda buzzed which helped pass the rest of the shopping. I ended up getting a hat at H&M.


One of the best things about the trip was going to Tiffany & Co. Justyn bought my present from there. I literally cried when we left the store cuz I was so happy. I'm such an emotional wreck! Isn't it pretty??



By the time shopping and drinking was over, it was time to grab a cab back to the hotel to drop off our bags. We went to Japantown for dinner. Justyn took me to a Yakuniku restaurant. It's basically a place where you can grill your own meats and veggies. We were both wiped out by the time we got back to the hotel so we pretty much passed out.


The next morning we had to wake up early to pack up everything and go pick up Justyn's mom from SF airport. Justyn wanted to get some breffus so we went to a bakery in Chinatown. We ended up getting a pork "floss/carpet" bun and bacon and green onion pastry. It was seriously delicious. We also got some other dim sum items for dinner and stopped at a produce shop to get some Chinese broccoli.

Now I'm sitting here at home watching a football game with Justyn. I might run to get some pictures printed for some scrapbooking but other than that, I'm just chilling out for the rest of my birthday!

2 comments:

machete said...

Happy belated birthday Steph, glad you guys had fun in SF.

would love to have that salmon cake recipe if you can post it. :)

JadedOne said...

Thanks Rick :D I'll get teh recipe from Justyn and PM it to you or somethin