SF Day 4: Little Italy, Palace of Fine Arts and Lombard Street

Saturday, June 16th, 2012:
A simple breakfast of leftover sourdough bread and nutella (nutella makes everything yummy!) at Lauren's place and then spent the afternoon with Purnima. :)

I had yet to visit Little Italy, so we went to a restaurant there called The Stinking Rose for lunch! Named thus probably because it's famous for its garlic and garlicky foods.

The tables for two were in these cute little private booths.
Ours had a chandelier! 

Bread om nom.

Pesto pizza :)

Thanks to Purnima for showing me around. :D 

Gelato afterwards at Gelateria Naia, because it's not a trip to Little Italy without gelato!
Rose flavor (which tasted like Lychee!) and Ferrero Rocher flavor. :)

Pretty cathedral! Lauren's brother goes to school near/in there?
Also, it was the weekend of the North Beach Festival,
so the Little Italy area was CRAZY. Thus all the people.

Escaped the crazy crowds of the North Beach Festival, since neither Purnima nor I are particularly crowd-loving. All of the white tents selling food and random things were sort of cool though, but I didn't really stop to look around or pay them much attention. Just wanted to flee the mobs of people! @_@
I told Purnima I really wanted to visit the Palace of Fine Arts, so she took me there next. Yay. :)

Easily my favorite site in SF :)

Sooo big!

Inside the dome

Seriously, everything was really gorgeous!

Even the houses along the street were really nice Q.Q

Pretty fountain!

This adorable swan family was swimming near the edge of the water.
Also, I never realized that swans were so big! o__o

Puny human against large architecture x)

We had a bit of time left after the Palace of Fine Arts so Purnima took me to Lombard Street, which is the super curvy and steep street...for lack of better words to describe it. Thank goodness Purnima is such a skilled SF driver! haha. :)

View from the top of Lombard Street!! Gorgeous.

Coit Tower and...Golden Gate Bridge? Or Bay Bridge? in the distance

Proof that all of these photos were taken inside of a car haha

I'm actually surprised at how well these turned out
even though I was in a moving vehicle...o_o

Pretty much the end of Lombard Street...
This was probably the last  hairpin turn.

The evening was spent hanging out with Lauren's family and entertaining a few more family friends they'd invited over. Again, it was a nice couple and they were really funny people! Seriously Lauren's family has the best family friends. :) While they went out to a burger place for dinner, Lauren took me to a good Mexican place with apparently super good deep fried fish tacos. I was still super full from my carb-packed lunch at The Stinking Rose though, so I just got a veggie taco.

Their guacamole was super good though...
Glad I got the veggie taco!! Definitely felt deprived of veggies amidst all of the good food in SF.

The rest of the evening was spent listening to the hilarious conversations Lauren's family and their friends had together. Good company and good food are really the best! :)