SF Road Trip - Day 3 (cont'd) - Beach by the Sunset District & Bay Shabu in West Portal

After getting back to the city, rather than go back to Thane's right away, I thought it might be cool to check out the Sunset District, where my cousin lives and also another friend that we would meet later that week. The neighborhood is in a grid pattern and streets are pretty easy to find. We actually passed by her house but saw that she wasn't home. Anyhow, we were going to go there later that night. We also tried looking for another friend's place and after driving around checking out the cool neighborhood restaurants (there's all kinds of ethnic eateries there! I'm so envious!), decided to head back. This decision of heading to the beach and checking out these neighborhoods ended up eating up valuable time on the way back to Thane's since we took the city streets and there was mega traffic. Anyhow, it was about 3 pm by the time we got to Ocean Beach near the Sunset. This is me by a graffiti'd concrete barricade.

Check out these homes - so close to the beach!

Bert and TC walking on the sand...You can see Cliff House) in the background...
Bert - still wearing his Charlie Brown t-shirt. You know, there was one year he wore it to the Comic Con and a lot of people kept asking him where he got it - it certainly attracted a lot of attention. Ironically, the Con wasn't selling any shirts like it. I mentioned in a previous post that I got him that shirt at Knotts Berry Farm. The only thing is, the zig zag stripes are only on the front of the shirt and do not continue on to the back.

Seal Rock in Ocean Beach. We were too far away to notice of there were any sea lions on the rocks. The beach wasn't that crowded either which was nice. A few couples, some fishermen and that was about it.

Dude, I need a haircut!

I took this shot while we were heading back to Thane's place. This is The Utah hotel on 4th & Bryant. I liked the colors on the exterior - the picture doesn't do it justice,but there are greens, purples and oranges galore!

Later that evening, after resting for a few minutes at Thane's place, we all headed back out to the Sunset District to meet up with my cousin. Like with most Filipinos, we call family friends cousins even if we aren't related. Her parents were good friends with my parents. Her parents are the god parents of my brother as well as to my godbrother (we'd be staying with his mother, my godmother from baptism in a few days). Anyhow, it's just easier to say "cousin".

I hadn't seen her in about 5 years. TC was only 3 back then. She has three kids - 2 girls (15 and 13) and 1 boy (9). Her husband was out playing ball that night so we went out to the neighborhood of West Portal to a Peruvian place she had heard about. Here it is, Fresca.
More about it here. The guy at the door told us it would be a half hour wait and we initially said, "Ok" but we didn't want the kids to go hungry. Just a few doors up with another place...

Bay Shabu Shabu ended up being our dinner destination...None of us, except for Thane had hot pot before so we decided to give it a go.

Apparently, this place opened recently. There was no one when we got there, which was around 8'ish. I wondered if that was a bad sign? Or maybe it was a slow night? Monday? The kids sat at their own table while the grownups had their own as well.

Thin slices of Kobe beef...this was for the adults. The kids wanted vegetables and seafood...

The vegetables - I thought it was odd that they included those mini carrots. Those things are hard and there's no way they'd cook down to being soft and "biteable". The mushrooms (which the flash kind of bleached out) were pre-scored. I didn't know until after I dumped some of it in there. We were kind of scolded by the lady working there because we put in too much stuff. WTF - we didn't know! But anyhow, it was all good in the end...

The restaurant was so dead that entire evening! How do the stay in business" There were origami cranes decorated the walls and origami geometic balls hanging from the ceiling.

Another shto of the veg plate:

Sorry there are no pix of the food in the hot pot - I was still messing with my camera's settings and the food setting wasn't working the way I wanted it. That, and I was too lazy to read the instruction manual to figure it out. But shit, I was disappointed in my crappy pix, hence the lack of food pix in this trip's posts. You can kind of see the udon noodles in the hot pot and the condiments - garlic, green onions and grated daikon.This here's the plate of shrimps, mussels, scallops, and fish ball things.

So, for us first timers to the Shabu Shabu experience, I thought it was okay. I thought it could have been more organized and I had hoped to have some "direction" from the woman working there. Instead, we got lightly scolded. We were kind of leaning on Thane to give us direction. Meanwhile, the kids were having fun dunking their stuff into the boiling broth. They actually ate most of their food. We offered them some beef but they didn't want any! More for us! I think I'll have to try a Shabu Shabu type place in San Diego to have a better comparison. This place was in a relatively ritzy neighborhood. I wonder if they toned it down for the yuppy residents? Anyways, I need to check out another place to compare!

Tomorrow - the Pez Museum and Cal...