Another tardy blog post, eh? I kicked off 2012 in style. Whoops, did I say “in style”? I meant “in bed”. Horrible illness notwithstanding, I managed to spend a little time with family and friends in London before hopping on a plane back to Tangier.

Early January in Tangier was exciting, and not just because of the delightful weather. Not one, but two friends, Christopher and Erin, joined me in Morocco for the final week of my vacation. If I described our activities in detail, I would be sitting here on my couch, wasting beautiful Tangier sunshine for the rest of the day. Instead, here is a bulleted list.

Spent the day in the Haight, saw more vintage and thrift stores on one street than I’ve seen in the whole of DC, had a nap in a park, got a panoramic view of the city from Buena Vista Park, and climbed the Lyon Street steps.

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.