Day 2 proved to be a busy and tiring day! After a good night sleep, I woke up early in the morning so we could check out the Farmer’s Market at Civic Center. Cat would meet up with us there to walk around before heading off to work after lunch.
Heart of the City Farmer’s Market happens on Wednesdays and Sundays in the United Nations Plaza from 7am to 5pm. You find a lot of local produce from the Bay Area and beyond, plus some cool food carts/trucks.
My mom ended up buying 4 plants from a vendor there. Yup, plants! One was a pomegrante, stevia, lemon verbena and…I can’t remember the last one. Some of them are kinda pricey here in Memphis already grown so she wanted to buy them there since they looked to be really good quality. Ugh, I’ll tell you the story of how we “smuggled” those back to Memphis in my luggage later.
After we saw Cat off to work, the next place my mom wanted to go to was Japantown. Now, before our trip to SF, I had told her about the “100yen” stores from Japan. Japantown has 2 of them: Ichiban Kan and Daiso. My mom has this thing for dollar stores so I knew she would have a blast shopping at both. She was eager to check out both stores.
We caught the #2 Clement bus instead of taking the #38 Geary as when we saw Cat off to work, we had headed towards the Financial District. We got off at Japantown and went right into Ichiban Kan. I didn’t take any pictures as I just wanted to spend the time browsing around. My mom had a field day in that store! She probably spent around $25 or so on various things from silk pillow covers to these cute cosmetic containers. Will post pics of those later.
Directly across from Ichiban Kan in the Japantown Mall is a small Daiso!
I did find some cool things I wanted to get from this store but they were out of stock. They were these little flags you hang on the wall. The sample ones had a cat and fish that were so cute and just $1.50 each! Again, my mom bought more stuff (lots of wind chimes for our backyard) from this store but I told her that we would be going to the larger Daiso store near Serramonte in Daly City soon.
We walked around Japantown and looked at a lot of stuff. I wanted to see more stores in the area, namely the New People building across the street. It was still under construction when I visited San Francisco last year in June. Unfortunately, my mom wanted to go to Clement Street right away. UGGGH!
We hopped back on the #2 bus. I warned my mom that it was a much longer ride this time to Clement. I also said we definitely had to get some lunch once we got to Clement as I was getting hungry and it was almost 2pm!
For those that don’t know, Clement Street is where the locals go for chinese stuff. Chinatown is for the tourist and the chinese that live in that area. Clement Street is more for actual locals that don’t want to deal with the craziness in Chinatown (the traffic and crowds). It’s a stretch of 5-7 blocks of chinese businesses mixed with non-chinese restaurants (some rated very highly) and businesses. There are 2 japanese grocery stores located on Clement also.
When I need to buy souvenirs, I sometimes buy them at Clement because they will always be cheaper than buying in Chinatown. We just walked up and down the street, going into the Kamei store. There’s another store similar to this across the street and further up that we checked out. I used to go to these stores when I lived in SF as I liked collecting small japanese bowls with cute designs. They always sold them for cheaper than what I could find in Japantown.
All that walking made me sooo hungry that we stopped at Wing Lee to eat. Now, I only get the fried chicken from this place. I have a thing for chinese fried chicken. This place makes the best! They have a 2 item special for $4.88!
I got the fried chicken, some stir fried greens and fried rice. My mom chose something with tripe. I can’t remember the other item she got. After lunch, we walked into a couple more stores and found a vest my dad had been wanting to get since his Mediterranean cruise last fall. He’d seen a lot of men using a vest like this and didn’t have to carry a “murse” to hold his camera and stuff.
Initially, he was going to buy it from Lands End but $60 for a vest seemed too steep to him. This was just $25. I took a pic of it and sent it to my sister Charlie to show to him to make sure this is what he wanted. He said YESSSS so my mom got it for him for Father’s Day.
After finding this, my mom wanted to buy some dim sum to bring back to the hotel. She purchased just a few pieces to snack on and we headed back to the hotel. Mom wanted to rest for a bit so we just watched tv in our room. When my mom woke up from her short nap, we headed out again to Union Square one block away. Funny thing, we went into Forever 21. It’s massive with 40,000 sq. feet and 3 floors. I wanted to check out the jewelry as I knew they would have a larger selection than our local store in Memphis. My mom, who has never ventured into the local store back home, had a blast looking at all the jewelry! I think she was too overwhelmed to pick something out to buy that she didn’t get anything that night.
We headed over to the thai restaurant Cat took me to the previous night. Bangkok Noodles is a thai restaurant just a block over. I was a little hungry but my mom said she would just snack on her dim sum as she wasn’t that hungry. I ordered this to go:
It’s Guay Teaw Pad Se-Ew which is stir fried flat noodles, chinese broccoli, egg, black bean sauce with chicken. Priced at $7.25. It was SO DELICOUS!!!! Seriously, big portion for the price! My mom couldn’t resist eating it with me! I actually ate only a little as I knew Cat was going to call me after she got off work.
When Cat did call me, she said that I was going with her and her friends (Rolly and Joe) to my old neighborhood, North Beach, to eat. GAH! They picked me up and we went to Tony’s Pizzeria Napoletano.
They ordered 2 pizzas and truffle fries! I was actually more excited about eating truffle fries than pizza! OMG, TASTES SOOO GOOD! My first time actually tasting something coated with truffles!
The pizzas were excellent as everything was fresh and the dough was handmade! I was sooo stuffed that evening! After we ate, they took me back to the hotel and I promptly fell asleep!
