We try and do a walking food tour in most places and had one booked to cover Chinatown and Little Italy. We took a couple of Waymos to get us to our destination, mainly because we wanted to experience a driverless car.

Matthew, Thomas and I took one Waymo which dropped us off directly where we wanted to go. The other car, with Bron, Ben and Emily struggled to find a parking spot and dropped them off a few blocks from the final destination which really didn’t impress Ben. Overall it was a surreal experience and a much smoother ride than I expected. Not once did I feel the need to slam in imaginary brakes.

We were the only ones on the food tour so got a private tour from the guide. We started in Chinatown, which is apparently the largest and second oldest in the world, and we visited a shop that makes fortune cookies. We had no idea that Fortune Cookies were invented in San Francisco, of all places, at the Japanese tea gardens. We watched them add the “fortunes” by hand into each cookie. We also had some pork buns (Emily’s favourite) and onion rolls which was a savoury long bread roll.

We then visited a tea shop and tried 4 different types of Chinese tea. One of them was just dehydrated roses that were then submerged in hot water. Interestingly everytime they prepared the tea, they would wash the leaves in boiling water and then brew for only a minute at a time. For lunch we had a serving of Peking duck and dim sums.

We walked through Zodiac alley that linked from Chinatown to Little Italy. The pedestrian crossings were painted in the colours of the Italian flag and the street decor changed significantly. The highlight for the kids was visiting the candy store where they could select their own lollies. We ended the tour at a pizza shop with margarita pizzas and arancini balls. Overall the tour went for over 4 hours and was a great way to spend the day.

As we had missed out on being able to see the Golden Gate Bridge earlier in the week due to heavy fog we decided to head up to the lookout once again to see if visibility was any better. We walked halfway across the bridge and there were a lot of tourists walking and cycling across the bridge. We had better visibility compared to yesterday but we still didn’t get an iconic shot of the entire bridge. We might have to come back to San Francisco another time….

We were still pretty full from the food tour so went to a Mexican restaurant near the hotel for a late dinner. The bartender was quite friendly and got Ben a non alcoholic Corona and made a mocktail for Matthew. Even Emily and Tom got special drinks. It was a great way to end our time in San Francisco.