Sunday, August 10, 2008

Out-of-Town Monday: Fisherman's Wharf

Recently I spent the better part of a week in San Francisco and one of the highlights of the trip was a visit to Fisherman's Wharf. My roommate, Catherine Snodgrass, and I took the F Market streetcar from Market Street and discovered Fronnie Lewis, another romance writer from Southern California, on the tram and asked her to join us. It was late afternoon and lots of people were getting off work and boarding the streetcar, which made it very crowded. The locals were friendly and helped us watch out for our stop at Pier 39.

After a quick visit to the Bare Escentuals store for a makeup fix, we decided to pass up Bubba Gump's in favor of the Pier Market Restaurant. (Nothing against Bubba Gump's, but there's one in Anaheim now plus I'd checked out the menus ahead of time and knew they don't offer the Clam Chowder Sourdough Bread Bowl I knew Cathy wanted. Fortunately, the Pier Market did serve the bread bowl and she enjoyed it. My salmon with herb butter was delicious, not to mention being a huge chunk of fish! I couldn't resist washing it down witha glass of Anchor Steam beer, a delicious local brew Fronnie worked her way through a huge helping of crab so everyone was happy with the meal. We had a seat by the window with a great view of San Francisco Bay, some of the resident sea lions and of Forbes Island (pictured at top right), which Frommer's guidebook describes as "a wonderfully ridiculous floating restaurant disguised as an island (complete with lighthouse and real 40-ft. palm trees)". Only in California.

Fisherman's Wharf used to be the commercial fishing district for San Francisco, but is now mainly a tourist mecca. It stretches over a number of wharfs covered with shops and restaurants. Some of the restaurants have been around for decades. There's also a chapel dedicated to the memory of the "lost fishermen" of Northern California at nearby Pier 45.

After dinner, we wandered through Chocolate Heaven, a sinfully irresistible candy shop. Much of the merchandise is from the local Ghirardelli chocolate factory. Fronnie and I found the truffles area and had to sample several of them. The hazelnut truffle was especially delicious, but I love anything with hazelnut flavor. Too bad we didn't have time to hit Ghirardelli Square. On the other hand, given my addiction to chocolate, it's probably just as well.

Here's a slideshow of my Fisherman's Wharf photos, courtesy of Picasa:



Linda

My Town Monday comes to us via Travis Erwin. Thanks, Travis! Click on his site to read his latest post and find links to the other participants.

12 comments:

debra said...

Looks like you had plenty of good eats, Linda. I remember the Ghiradelli factory from many years ago. Yum!

Joshua said...

looks awesome!

Unknown said...

Ohhhh ... I wanna go back. Thanks for sharing your photos. Absolutely lovely. I'm glad you had a great time.

pattinase (abbott) said...

SF is one of the great cities, isn' it? Alcatraz is chilling.

Linda McLaughlin said...

Debra, I'd forgotten how good the food is in San Francisco. Expensive but good.

Joshua, thanks. It's one of our prettiest cities, IMO.

Rhonda, glad you enjoyed the photos.

Patti, I heard they're doing evening tours of Alcatraz. How spooky that must be!

Anonymous said...

Linda, hands down, San Francisco is my favorite city. I should add, to visit. I like living down here where day to day life is easy.

Linda McLaughlin said...

I know what you mean, Kathleen. The traffic was unbelievable and I just heard SF is thinking of charging people to drive into the city during rush hour. And we think Orange County is congested!

Linda

Beth said...

It would be hard not to have a great time in SF. During the few hours of free time we had at conference, we did some sight seeing and ran into some lovely tourists. My sis used to live in SF so we would go up and visit her once a year. I really miss that.

Travis Erwin said...

San Fran is one of the cities on my short list of places I haven't been yet but would love to see.

Reb said...

Oh it looks lovely. It is one of the places I would like to visit someday.

Anonymous said...

Linda,

Terrific photos. I had a great time hanging out with you and Cathy at Pier 39.

Thanks for sharing,

Linda McLaughlin said...

Beth, glad you had time for some sightseeing

Travis and Reb, hope you make it SF some day. It's a great city to visit.

Fronnie, so glad we ran into you on the streetcar. It was fun hanging out together. :D

Linda