North Beach, Coit Tower & Levi’s Plaza

Now that work isn’t crazy busy anymore I’ve made a goal to get out of the office once a day and go for at least a 30-40 minute walk. Generally I just walk down Embarcadero but that started to get boring so I looked up how close Coit Tower was and it turns out it’s only a 15 minute walk to the base of the staircase. Twice last week I walked up to Coit Tower and was amazed by how beautiful (and strenuous!) the walk was.

A random, funny mural at the base of the staircase: “No Dogs. Toy Poodles Okay.“

Middle of the staircase (total number of stairs going up? 358. And yes, I counted them.

Gorgeous flowers in someone’s front yard–anyone know the name of them??

Filbert Steps

I would LOVE to live here, what a cute little “street”!

Someone’s adorable front yard

Almost there!

Thar she blows!

After raving about my lunch-time adventures, on Kevin’s day off on Saturday we decided to take advantage of one of the city’s last sunny days and go explore North Beach for brunch and then hike up to Coit Tower.

We really wanted to go to Mama’s Cafe for brunch but the line was ridiculous and we were starving so we Yelp app’d across Curly’s Coffee Shop. It didn’t look like too much on the outside…

But it ended up being a yummy breakfast spot! And turn’s out it’s a Japanese diner as well–interesting mix dontcha think?

Walking through North Beach we saw them painting over my favorite mural (see photo in old blog post here) to celebrate the SF Giants’ recent World Series win. I guess I’m okay with them painting over my favorite mural…

With bellies full and Lola in tow, we started off on the Barbary Coast Trail (aka Stockton Street) to the base of the tower (never really knew what those street markers were for all this time, but looked it up and you can see the info. at this link if you feel so inclined).

We took a slightly different path down the hill and saw some more really neat homes and yards.

Kinda funny, kinda creepy at the same time.

We ended up at Levi’s Plaza which I pass by everyday on the way to and from work and hadn’t spent much time there before. Lola was in HEAVEN with the grassy hills and the shallow river and since there weren’t many people around we let her off leash to explore.