SF to LA

We're a little behind schedule with the blog updates, so I'll be talking about our trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles, even though we're quite a bit past that point, as you can see by the following Google Latitude path (again, with dots missing where there was no data coverage):

That morning, we decided to check out Chinatown in San Francisco, which was quite impressive. Red Chinese lanterns hung across the streets (note: plural) that made up Chinatown and there was even a performance of some sort in one of the parks. We stopped at several shops to look for some souvenirs, where we were greeted with ambient music of a style you would expect to find in an RPG video game, as we browsed the wares in the stores' basements. We walked through a few streets and it was interesting to see how they differed from each other. The main street was more tourist-oriented, with many souvenir shops and such, while a parallel street consisted mainly of grocery stores, where many locals were buying fresh fruits and vegetables.

A tea shop caught our eye as we walked around and we decided to check it out. It had a very extensive collection of various teas. They offered us tasting of several of the teas, which were quite tasty - and we ended up buying some, such as the lychee black tea.

We stopped to have Dim Sum for brunch at a place called the House of Dim Sum. We were expecting something a little bit more fancy, but it turned out that the House of Dim Sum offered very little in the service department - you had to pick up your food at the counter and they gave disposable plates and utensils. Despite this, the food was tasty and we were satisfied.

Afterwards, we proceeded out of San Francisco towards Los Angeles. We opted to take the scenic route along the shore of the Pacific Ocean, rather than the faster interstate route. Although this cost us 2 extra hours of travel time, it was well worth it. The views were absolutely breathtaking - most of the road went atop and along cliff-sides next to the shore, with many vista points along the way. We stopped at quite a few of them to admire views such as these:

The rest of the drive was uneventful as we reached our motel in Los Angeles. Stay tuned for the next post, where the mystery surprise in LA will be revealed!