Another lazy morning for the McMasters, it was bliss.  I love lying in, especially in hotels for some reason.  I think it’s just the pinnacle of sheer indulgence.  Instead of paying an insane amount of money for the breakfast buffet on site, we decided to head in to Berkeley itself, the town in which the hotel is located.

Here is a busy bustling town, filled with little streets lined with cafes, restaurants and shops.  Among which, is a diner called Bettes Oceanview diner.

A diner, which Col had discovered during his nosy-ing online, and decided was where we were eating.  When we got there, the line of people waiting for a table was out on the street.

They also had little tables sat outside, complete with green blankets to warm those chilly punters who decided to eat in the cold.

We put our name on the waiting list, ’45 minutes to an hour’ the extremely nice host informed us.  In spite of us being utterly starving at this point, Col informed me that it’d be worth the wait – and, that there was a Crate and Barrel outlet across the street (among other shops) to keep us busy until our table was available.

We started in Crate and Barrel, I’d never been before, but, it was an outlet branch, and I figured that it might be worth a ‘Jeff Juke’ (aka look).  Once inside, the place was packed! But it also had a huge selection of home-wares, we came out with a set of baking/mixing bowls, turkey lifters (I’m always having trouble lifting stuff out of my crockpot), Thanksgiving trivets, Christmas napkin rings – oh, funny story about this…

While I was mooching through the box of napkin rings, a lady came over and picked up the last red one as well as a gold one.  The red napkin ring that I had intended on picking up, she just beat me to it, curses!  She walked away with them around her finger and continued to ‘nurse’ them, the entire way around the store.  When she got to the check out, she decided to dump the red ring with the cashier and only buy the gold one.

Col was peeved, ‘I KNEW she wasn’t gonna buy it!’ LOL!!  Thankfully it meant that I could pick it up to go with the other 3 red ones I’d bought, but all I could think of was that episode of Ally McBeal where she gets arrested in the supermarket for fighting with a lady over a bag of crisps! LOL!

We headed back to Bettes, where our table was only minutes from being ready, my brunch (as it was now no longer solely breakfast territory) was a fish sandwich, I’m telling y’all about what I ate, cause it was absolutely delicious.  I didn’t need any sauce whatsoever, as it was tasty enough on it’s own.  The potatoes that came with it, were also yummy too – definitely worth the wait.

The atmosphere in this little diner also helps you fall head over heels with it, the host knows all of the regulars by name, the restaurant is a narrow diner, with people sitting elbow to elbow, gawdy 50’s decor and only one restroom, where there is inevitably going to be a queue.  The service was great, quick, attentive and they have their own line of merchandise if you’d like to mark the fact that you visited Bettes.

After a brief visit to the scrapbook shop for some California/San Francisco type stickers and papers, the drive in to San Francisco was slow, luckily for me, I had my brother and three of his friends on WhatsApp messenger to keep me entertained on the drive (which Col had the roof down on so I was foundered!) to China Town.

Trying not to sound too pretentious, this will have been my third China Town this year, Malaysia, Singapore and now San Francisco.  San Fran’s China Town is the biggest outside of Asia, so I was keen to see how it stacked up against the others.  It was pretty big, at least bigger than the one in Malaysia and had the same type of stuff for sale.  We didn’t buy much, in fact, aside from a gift for my mother (who asked me to pick something up for her), something that I, too, bought for my own house, we didn’t get much at all.

The most hellish and difficult part of China Town, was trying to find a restroom, we’d been driving for 45-odd minutes, we then spent at least an hour and a half dandering around China Town, then we spent a further hour trying to locate a toilet.  Three independent coffee shops, two Starbucks – no toilets.  We ended up having to go in to a Galleria that we happened upon just to find facilites, it begs the question, where do San Franciscans pee? or, do they just not drink anything? It was a common theme throughout the holiday, even in Asia we had more luck finding toilets than we did here!!!

Col seems to think, that San Francisco is sorely lacking in a public transport system, a tube or train system.  That would solve not only the issue of insane parking fees ($32 for a few hours) and having to move to different areas of the city as it’s so huge (resulting in multiple parking fees), but also the issue of no toilets, as each station would have public toilets.  My hubby is a genius!! Though until then, we’ll just have to suffer through San Francisco with crossed legs and upset bladders!

We sat in Tully’s Coffee shop in the Galleria (yuck, yuck, yuck by the way) and tried to decide where to eat an early dinner.  Using the Yelp app, we discovered that a little Chinese place called ‘R&G Lounge’ had rave reviews, so,w e went there.  Aside from the most delicious spring roll I’ve ever eaten, the food was bland, mediocre at best.  The menu was largely restricted, especially if you didn’t want to have seafood (I’d guess that if you loved seafood, you’d have loved this place).  It wasn’t great and neither of us ate much – not only that, but we were charged $40 for the displeasure! Gr!

From there, in rush hour traffic, we tried to make our way to Pier 39 where we intended to pass a few hours before we went to the comedy club and perhaps grab dessert.  When we finally got there, we dandered up and down the Pier for a while, we picked up a strawberry and chocolate crepe from the busiest spot on the pier.

It was delicious – and you got to watch the guy making the crepes too, which added a bit of a novelty factor!

Before we headed to the comedy club, we decided that parking was $15 for the two hours we’d been, but many restaurants validated the parking.  So, we buy $15’s worth of food/drinks and get our parking validated, while curing Col’s starvation (he barely touched his dinner in the Chinese at the same time).  We were on the clock, so the only place that didn’t have an extreme queue, was the Luigi’s pizzeria.

Now I know why it didn’t have a queue.  I’ve tasted frozen pizza’s that were better.  Yuck.

Col didn’t mind it, so at least he was full by the end of it, and we had our parking validated, so it was on to the Punch Line comedy club for us!

For those of you who haven’t heard of Greg Proops, he was a regular on ‘Whose line is it anyway?’ as a stand-up, improv comedian.  Col listens to his podcasts every week and really wanted to go see him, tickets to the earlier show were all sold out, but the 10pm show had $10 tickets (with a two drink minimum), so he signed us up.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, with it not being a proper comedy show etc, but, as it turned out, I laughed out loud for most of it.  He was pretty funny – I’m so glad we got tickets!

The 10pm show didn’t start until around 10.30pm and ran late, until just after midnight, from there, it was back to the hotel (12.30am), where I swiftly passed out and left poor Col to finish up our packing (1.30am! I know, I’m such a crappy wife! LOL!)