San Francisco

I packed up the children last week (blowing kisses & waving goodbye to our Pops) and headed north to Berkeley & San Francisco. Our good friends moved there in June and we have all have been missing them. AND we haven't gone anywhere this Summer. I mean anywhere. We hadn't even left LA County. A major change of scenery was needed and it did us lots of good. In San Francisco we shopped:Went to Japantown for lunch and to an amazing, gigantic Japanese bookstore (4x the size of my local Japanese bookstore):
I bought the third book on the top row. There is a shirt pattern in there that I absolutely must make for Kate (I am not going to even think about the fact that all the directions are written in Japanese…nope not going to think about it.) In Berkeley we went to an incredible bakery:
I stopped again on our way home to pick up a chocolate croissant for Chris, but by 11 a.m. they were already sold out. Sad. We also went grocery shopping at the Berkeley Bowl which I absolutely cannot stop thinking about. That place is ridiculous. As one Yelp reviewer said; "When I die, I want to be buried in the produce section." If you live 50 miles within that place–it is worth the drive. I did not take my camera into the grocery store. I'm sure you understand.
I also have to admit that I ate more ice-cream in a 72 hour period than I have in the last year. Have you ever heard of the show Man vs. Food? The host goes across the country taking on food challenges. At The Olde San Francisco Creamery Co. he was challenged to eat "The Kitchen Sink" which is the equivalent of 2 gallons of ice-cream (or 8 gigantic scoops) in under an hour (You can see the video clip here.) "The Kitchen Sink" is an actual mini-kitchen sink that is chock full of ice-cream. We took the kids, all 6 of them. On more than one occasion Henry tried to convince me to order "The Kitchen Sink" for him & Jake, that they could eat it. They are 5. We didn't buy it. We settled on a brownie sundae instead. I think the milk chocolate flavor was the favorite. It tasted a lot like malt, which I really love. And last but not least:
A tour of the Jelly Belly Factory where our cameras were not permitted. This is all I got. It was great–the kids loved it.