Today we started with a well deserved sleep in for the first time this trip. Jet lag hasn’t really hit us yet, but we were pretty tired from all the walking and driving the last couple of days.
Our plan was to head to the NBA tonight at Chase Center with Golden State hosting San Antonio. We hadn’t gotten tickets yet but locked them in this morning. Still pricey, but a heck of a lot less than the Warriors-Rockets night we missed out on two nights ago.
The rest of the afternoon was free, so we tossed up the afternoon baseball match, but in the end decided to do another walking tour of San Fran to areas we hadn’t been to yet.
In the end we set off at around 11:13am and the first stop was the rooftop garden we’d read about. Damn, this thing was amazing. It was a large garden area at the top of a five story building and it was so lovely.
We walked around for a while then noticed they had boardgames setup so decided to have a game of Catan, much to our surprise. Adam got the job done winning 10-5.
After our game we continued our walk and stumbled upon a farmers market near the government building. It was not bad, but basically the same as what you’d see back home.
Then it was onwards to The Painted Ladies about an hour away. They are one of the more famous sights in San Francisco which display the architecture of the area in front of an incredible backdrop of the city. We’d actually been here before 13yrs ago but couldn’t remember much.
The ladies were ok, basically just four houses next to each other, but there were tons of people there.
Along the way we stumbled upon some vegan restaurant called Rad Radish which turned out to be really lovely. The first sit down meal we’d had since we got here. In fact, finding food has been an annoying part of this trip so far, so this was a good stop.
After lunch and the Painted Ladies, we set off to Divisadero St which isa beautiful old street with plenty of shops and restaurants. Much better than the rundown part of town we were staying. So this is where all the nice restaurants were hiding all this time!
Adam got a coffee and then we found an awesome boardgame shop with heaps of games we’d have loved to buy, but too bad we only brought carry on luggage.
Next we headed to Japantown which turned out to be a little underwhelming, then made the 60-minute walk back to our room for a well deserved rest.
Now we had about 90-minutes to kill before heading to the basketball, which we hoped would be one of the highlights of the trip.
San Antonio Spurs @ Golden State Warriors
It was finally time to head to the game! Golden State were the first team we ever watched live way back in 2012, which was almost 13yrs to the day. However back then they were playing out in Oakland, now they have moved into the fancy new Chase Center which was going to be a good experience.
Before the game we got another smoothie from Jones & The Juice and these are the nicest smoothies we’ve had I reckon, they are amazing.
We got to the game nice and early and settled into our seats near the top. It was way too high, but we didn’t fancy forking out the $800+ per seat to sit in the lower levels.
The dude next to us was a nice guy and we got talking to him. He knew a lot about Aussie basketball and was interested in hearing about our trip. A super nice dude!
After a bloated national anthem and festivities, it was finally game time. The Warriors shot out to a double digit lead early and given the Spurs were officially eliminated from the playoffs, we thought this one would get ugly.
The Spurs got back into it and took a narrow lead into half time. In the third quarter the Warriors were on fire and we witnessed Steph Curry hit his 300th 3pt for the season and break the all time record. By now the Warriros were up 12pts at 3QT and looked in cruise control.
Behind us were some annoying girls who would not shut up or inserting the word “like” into every sentence multiple times, so we’d had enough and went in search for better seats in the lower level.
The security here was a lot tighter than other stadiums we’d been to so sneaking in wouldn’t be possible. However we found a good spot on the concourse to watch the game and had a really good view.
In the end the game was an epic. Scores were tied 111-111 with 3 seconds left and then Harrison Barnes hit a dagger 3pt on the buzzer to sink his former team. What are the odds of being in the stadium for a fairytale finish like that.
By now it was late and we were tired after walking 29,000+ steps today, so we grabbed a couple of bottles of sparkling water, ate the rest of our cherry pie and decided to catch up on some blog writing. Tomorrow is another driving day which we are looking forward to.
More Photos from our day
