For our guests who may be exploring the Bay Area during the wedding weekend

🚕 Uber/Lyft - are widely available in the bay area. It takes about an hour to drive from San Jose to San Francisco (depending where you are going)

🚆 Caltrain - commuter rail train that runs from San Jose to San Francisco along the south bay/peninsula. On the weekend trains leave every 30 minutes and take about 90 minutes to reach San Francisco. The trains now have WiFi. You can use Caltrain to travel to/from SFO Airport by connecting with BART (although pay attention to the schedule because the exact connection changes based on time of day).

🚈 VTA Light Rail - light rail lines that services south bay. There is a station a couple blocks from the hotel/venue. Relatively slow (takes 1hr 45m to get to Mountain View), faster to take a bus + Caltrain.

🚇 BART - Group of commuter rail lines originating from San Francisco that also provides connectivity to some areas in San Francisco.

So for south bay, we're counting everything south of Palo Alto. Even when it's a bit on the east side of the bay.

🧺Farmer's Markets - San Jose, Campbell, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and many other cities

Mountain View - 650 W Evelyn Ave, Mountain View, CA 94041

In the bay area, farmer's markets are year round. Our favorite is the Mountain View one. The Mountain View one is close to the Caltrain station and the downtown area. You'll be able to find sit down restaurants, cafes, and boba nearby. Even without leaving the farmer's market you can get tacos, baked goods, rotisserie chicken, and coffee.

🛍️ Downtowns of Willow Glen, Campbell, Los Gatos, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Saratoga, Burlingame, Palo Alto

The downtown areas of smaller cities are cute, walkable (parking is... questionable), and filled with restaurants, cafes, and stores. Most are near Caltrain stations.

🧋 Xing Fu Tang - 1735 N Milpitas Blvd, Milpitas, CA 95035

This is Tina's favorite boba place. It's a chain store from Taipei. At the time of typing, this is the only one in the bay area. They are known for their brown sugar milk drink but Tina likes their Soda and Handmade Jelly. There's a drawer in the store. It's like a temple where you pick one of the sticks from the cup. The stick has a number that corresponds to the number on the drawers. There's little pieces of paper in the drawer. Take one, that's your fortune for the day.

💻 Computer History Museum - 1401 N Shoreline Blvd, Mountain View, CA 94043

A big museum with lots of artifacts about the history of computing. You can even punch your own name on a punch card.

🏞️ Alviso Marina County Park - 1195 Hope St, Alviso CA 95002

If you happen to fly into SFO during the day time, you may fly over red and yellow patches of water before you get into SFO. This is a salt marsh at the south tip of the bay.

South bay is known for amazing Vietnamese food due to the large Vietnamese population.

🍜 Pho Kim Long - 2082 N Capitol Ave., San Jose, CA 95132

Any combination of their beef pho is yummy here. Bun Cha Ca Thit Nuong is grilled fish with BBQ Pork with thin noodle. It comes with rice paper for you to wrap your own roll with the noodles. This is a special here at Pho Kim Long. So special it doesnt have a number on the menu. Definitely watch a video or read a review on this dish if you're new to Vietnamese cuisine to know what to do.

🍜 House of Pho - 1066 E El Camino Real, Sunnyvale, CA 94087

Our go-to pho restaurant. Mostly because they're super fast, busy but never packed, and open past 8 PM. Mitchell likes the lemongrass chicken here and Tina likes the pho special #1 here.

🥟 Saigon Harbor - 1135 Lawrence Expy, Sunnyvale, CA 94089

Although it's name is Saigon Harbor, this is a Chinese restaurant. Come here for dim sum. It's one of the few remaining restaurants in the bay area that still have push carts for their dim sum which is a cultural experience. Mitchell's favorite dim sum is BBQ Pork buns, steamed or baked buns, both are special order items you would need to order from a waiter. Otherwise you can ask for items on the dim sum carts as they come by. Tina's favorite is 炸兩, zaa loeng, a fried chinese donut (savory) wrapped in rice noodle, served with sweet soy sauce.

🍲Thai Orchid - 2591 N First St, San Jose, CA 95131

Mitchell and Tina's favorite Thai restaurant. Our favorites are the Pad Thai and Basil Fried Rice. You can't go wrong here.

Tina was born and raised in San Francisco so our recommendations are coming from a native who appreciates it if you didn't call it San Fran.

Nob Hill/Russian Hill

There's a lot of cool/cute shops and cafes in these neighborhoods. The biggest thing about these two neighborhoods is the word, "Hill". It's in the names so, there's gonna be hills, lots of them.

What we like about these two neighborhoods is actually the view. It's practically top of the hill. Chinatown is just at the bottom of the hill. With so many hills, you'll see a lot of street steps to make it easier to get up.

Here are our favorite street steps in this neighborhood:

Ina Coolbrith Park - Vallejo & Taylor, Vallejo St., San Francisco, CA 94133

1000 Vallejo St., San Francisco, CA 94133

1045 Broadway, San Francisco, CA 94133

Chinatown

San Francisco Chinatown is the oldest Chinatown in the U.S. The main west-east streets are flat while the north-south streets are hilly. The main west-east street is Grant Avenue: more of the tourist street where you'll see lanterns and souvenir stores lining the street. Stockton Street is lined with grocery and produce stores that locals frequent. Many of the alleyways are wide and frequently hold events like festivals or galleries.

If you're visiting Chinatown, we recommend signing up for a guided tour with Chinatown Alleyway Tours. This is a youth program from Tina's previous company, Chinatown Community Development Center, that inspire youths to design tour routes, research the history of Chinatown, and lead tour groups. They even built a replica of SF Chinatown in Minecraft.

The key to exploring Chinatown isn't exactly hitting key locations but just immerse yourself in the hustle and bustle. That's why, we mostly have food recommendations.

🥠 Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory - 56 Ross Alley, San Francisco, CA 94108

Nestled in one of Chinatown's many alleyways, Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory is always a fun place to visit. No photographs inside but they're very generous with free samples of their fortune cookies hot off the machine. It's a small store but you get to see how fortune cookies are folded.

🍴 Capital - 839 Clay St, San Francisco, CA 94108

An old Chinatown staple restaurant. Famous for their friend chicken wings. We like their salt and pepper version (椒鹽雞翼) and the Thai-styled chicken wings (泰式雞翼). Other tried and true dishes: fried calamari (炸新魷), sauteed pea sprouts (蒜蓉大豆苗), eggplant with meat sauce (肉醬茄子), egg tofu with spicy meat sauce (炸醬玉子豆腐), and tomato beef noodles/pan fried noodles (蕃茄牛肉麵/煎麵).

🥟 Dim Sum Bistro - 675 Broadway, San Francisco, CA 94133

There's not a lot of seating here but part of the experience is eating your dim sum out of a bag on the busy streets. This is more of a bakery than a cafe. The staff are more comfortable with English than other dim sum bakeries we've seen AND they take credit cards.

🚃 Cable Car Museum - 1201 Mason St, San Francisco, CA 94108

Small but mighty, free museum about San Francisco's famous cable cars. Warning, it's on a very steep hill.

🛍️ On Waverly - 162 Waverly Pl, San Francisco, CA 94102

Tina's favorite novelty store in Chinatown that supports Asian American artists.

Other Things in SF

🔭 Exploratorium - Pier 15 Embarcadero at, Green St, San Francisco, CA 94111

Fun museum all about discovering and understanding different science theories and principles. Lots of hands-on exhibits.

🔬Cal Academy of Sciences - 55 Music Concourse Dr, San Francisco, CA 94118

Science museum in the middle of Golden Gate Park. Includes a rooftop garden, aquarium, and so much more.

🍗 Cafe Zuni - 1658 Market St, San Francisco, CA 94102

Known for their brick oven roasted chicken. Delicious!

🍴Foreign Cinema - 2534 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110

A cool restaurant with films playing on a brick wall in the patio.

🍳 Liholiho Yacht Club - 871 Sutter St, San Francisco, CA 94109

Hawaiian restaurant with an open kitchen.

🏛️Alcatraz Island

Island in the bay that was previously used as a federal prison and is now a National Park. Accessible by ferry from Pier 33.

🏝️Treasure Island

Treasure Island is a man-made island that hangs off the Bay Bridge. It was used as a naval base during WWII.

If you're here during a weekend in the summer (summer lasts to October here in the bay), check Treasure Fest. It started as a weekend flea market and has now grown to a summer weekend market. You can find vintage items, good food, and a view of cities in the bay.

Hiking in the City

🌉Land's End - 680 Point Lobos Ave, San Francisco, CA 94121

Want a short easy hike that's pretty rewarding? In the northwest corner of the city, you'll get views of the Golden Gate Bridge. The path is mostly paved. If you choose to, you can diverge and go down a set of stairs to the beach.

🗻🗻Twin Peaks

If you wanna to get a good look down Market street you'll get one at the viewpoint of Twin Peaks. To be fair, we've only driven up to the viewpoint. Highly suggest that you use google maps for directions so it'll take you on the street stairs rather than having you walk on the side of the road with no sidewalks.