The California Coast San Fran June 2013

I meant to post this back in June when returned from California but I forgot. So this will be the shortened version based on what I remember from two months ago.

Wildlife of Chinatown

My mom sister and myself went on a trip to California this summer. We'd never been to California before so we flew into San Francisco on a Sunday morning and spent the week driving north. We visited Point Reyes National Seashore, St Helena, Sonoma, Calistoga, Mendocino wine country and my sister toured the Culinary Institute of American.

We arrived in San Francisco where I was greeted with 4 White-throated Swifts floating about the sky train. Our plan was to drive from the airport to our hotel and then head out to China Town and then Fisherman's Warf. It didn't quite go that well.

There was a fundraising race of some sort and the main road we needed to find was closed off. We drove in circles for 45 minutes trying to find the correct one way road that met up again with the road we needed. All we had was a simple map of san fran that the rental car place gave us.



Sealions at Fisherman's Warf

We were relieved to find our hotel and drop our stuff off. We bought a real map and started our journey through China Town. Now china town was not very birdy. Lots of pigeons, House Sparrows, Starlings and Western Gulls, the food on the other hand was in excess. Every shop had delicious varieties of fried or steamed dumplings, all the touristy shops overflowed with random Asiatic trinkets.

Western Gull
 

Later after a quick refresher at the hotel we made our way to Fisherman's Warf in hopes of finding some tastey seafood. The food here was surprisingly disappointing, but we got to see the sea lions and I got great views of all gulls on the boat dock. We even found a couple on the nest!

White-crowned Sparrow singing at the Warf

Thanks for reading! -Megan