Farmers Goods and Stolen Goods

Yesterday was mostly a day of relaxing towards the end but we were busy for the first half of the day.  We started off going over to the local farmer's market which was luckily right down the street from us.  They had all sorts of stuff - breads, cheeses, meats, fruits, vegetables, some of everything.  We got some bread and cheese for later and then got a delicious crab sandwich for breakfast.  Then we went inside the Ferry Marketplace and got some mini-donuts and a crab breakfast burrito.  We wandered around the marketplace some more and then headed over to Chinatown for our tour.

For our Chinatown tour, the owner of the tour company actually went out with some of the group (I guess she doesn't usually go out anymore) - she also has written a book which makes her somewhat well known I guess.  Anyways, instead of going with her our half of the group went with Herman, a guy who grew up in Chinatown but since has retired and seemingly become more Americanized.  It was a very good tour though since Herman obviously cared about what he was talking about.  We went in a lot of shops - shops for food, for tea, for art, for fortune cookies (the same one as the day before!), a buddhist temple, and many others.  The tea shop was interesting since the owners were somewhat young and were running the family business and the guy had just come back from China 3 AM earlier that day.  We concluded the tour having some dim sum at a restaurant with the whole group which was cool as well.

After the tour we felt pretty tired/jetlagged and so headed back to the hotel for a nap.  On the way, we were stopped at a corner waiting for the light and suddenly heard a piercing scream.  At first it sounded like something was wrong but then when nothing happened we figured someone just got surprised.  Soon after that though a guy came bolting out of a Taco Bell with a wad of cash and sprinted across the road and disappeared into the other side.  Most of us were just frozen throughout the whole thing and didn't really know what to do.  A woman came out of the Taco Bell and we pointed to where the guy had run off to and so she went in to call 911.  We came on going back to the hotel but it definitely gave us something to think about - making sure we were thankful we were safe and that nobody else got hurt (except for Taco Bell's profits).  It was very surprising that the robbery happened in plain daylight and only a couple of blocks from where we were staying so it made us a little uneasy.  We also overhead someone saying that they thought a robbery like that just took place a few days/weeks ago.  So, very interesting being witness to our first robbery but not something that we want to go through again.

After we came back to the hotel we slept for a while and then went out to the Ferry Marketplace to pick up some food.  We got some fish tacos, garlic fries, and a "Mr. Kentucky" (split hot dog with a bunch of stuff on it) which were tasty.  Then we came back to the hotel for some free wine and then chilled in our room for the rest of the night.  We finally watched the season finale of Lost and caught up on some Office episodes.  Overall, not too busy but still had an interesting tour, good food, and lots of relaxing!