Russian Hill

On Saturday my friend Mai and I met up to do some rummage/estate sale shopping. We're walking up Union Street from Van Ness, half-way up a very steep hill, when she says, "I don't know if this is a mirage, but does that sign up there say 'Ice Cream'?" I laughed so so so hard I could barely keep walking. The reason I laughed so so so hard was because I was also thinking that ice cream sounded really good right then.

Later we explored some cute shops along Polk and made our way to Nick's Crispy Tacos for a couple tacos and strawberry agua frescas. Getting it "Nick's Way" is definitely worth the extra 95 cents. One of the shops had some parakeets in a pretty antique dome-topped cage. I began to think I wanted to get myself some birds to keep me company in my room. Prone to following my impulses and regretting them later, I gave it more thought. This is what I came up with:

1. Birds are noisy.
2. Cleaning up bird shit isn't fun.
3. They shit a lot.
4. I have little space in my room for a large bird cage.
5. My room is an arctic tundra, which means that they'd probably die the first night I got them.

So for the time-being I've decided not to get birds. I guess I just really miss having animals in my life. What about fish?

After chowing down on our favorite tacos, we stopped into Loving Cup, a cute little dessert shop we came across on our treck up the hill. They specialize in rice pudding and fro-yo, but also have smoothies, coffee, espresso, and cupcakes. The fro-yo was absolutely scrumptious! You have your choice of vanilla, chocolate, or non-dairy and the price includes one topping. They put a disk of packaged fro-yo into this industrial drill machine, add the topping(s), and it comes out the bottom and drops into your cup. It's truly brilliant for the ingredients are mixed into each bite. I ordered chocolate with strawberries (because I neglected to see raspberries on the list) and the strawberries were blended up so tiny and perfect and infused the chocolate with so much strawberry flavor I was in heaven. Heads up my vegan friends - I will be taking you here soon!