Our last day was spent revisiting places we didn’t spend enough time in earlier. We made a quick tour of Japantown, where I ate a crèpe. Went into every Japanese grocery store within a 4-block radius, passing up fresh octopus for delicious but hard-to-open fruit drops. Also picked up a pair of handy collapsible chopsticks.Headed back to the Lumiere to watch the animated shorts, followed by a very satisfying dinner at one of the city’s best Thai restaurants. After that, we repacked our things and went to catch a bus to the airport. Instead, the bus breezed right past us despite shouting and waving. We were grouchy the whole taxi ride to the airport.

Most of day four was spent on a couch at our hostel, getting some design work done. I escaped just in time to see clouds covering up the sun and realize that the Asian Art Museum was free the previous Sunday instead of Tuesday. Whoops. We trudged back to the hostel and discovered that the Oscar-nominated shorts were playing just a short walk away at the Lumiere Theatre. After watching the live-action shorts, we took the bus to Ghirardelli Square, bought a large back of assorted chocolate squares to split, and then finished the day at our favorite Indian restaurant.

On day three we followed a painted truck into Japantown, visited every thrift store in Haight-Ashbury, ate surprising pasta, and made it back downtown in time to see something very San Francisco: a protest.

Took the tram to The Castro, explored, ate our traditional lunch at Orphan Andy’s, climbed the hill in Buena Vista Park, endured very windy weather, and watched a bizarre hilltop ceremony.

We started off the day with bagels at our hostel on the edge of the Tenderloin. Wandered into Chinatown for the New Year street festival, then ended up at Ghirardelli for ice cream and free chocolate. Watched the sunset over the bay and played in the sand.