VISIT SF

Having lived in the Bay Area my whole life, I have yet to explore the beautiful city I live in. Of course, if you come visit San Francisco on a vacation, there are the typical tourist like things you have to do, such as walk the Golden Gate Bridge, visit Union Square, Pier 39, AT&T Park (boo Giants) and take a bus tour. As much fun as those things are, the less traditional things are so much more enjoyable. Now, I'm not going to make a laundry list of these things because you won't get any information out of that. Mind you, these are not in order of most favourite to least favourite.

I'm going to start off with food because it's what everyone wants all the time. Crown & Crumpet Tea Stop Cafe is the most adorable cafe located in Japantown. It's food and beverages make you feel like you're in England... who wouldn't want that? Another food spot is Smitten Ice Cream. They are said to have the creamiest ice cream made right in front of you.

If you want to bring out your inner six year old, take a trip down the Seward Street Slides, which are very well hidden in Noe Valley. Another super fun thing to do if you don't want to exactly be all too mature, is to visit the park in Yerba Buena Gardens. It's every elementary schooler's dream park, or in my case a fourteen year old's dream park. From the giant slides to the climbing structure, it's loads of fun.

The Exploratorium is one of the coolest interactive museums (I'm a big science nerd), with my favourite exhibit, The Wave Organ. It provides a beautiful view of the city and you can literally hear the ocean due to the way it's sculpted and constructed. The Sutro Baths are so unexplainably amazing. They were once a public bath but the Pacific Ocean doesn't run through it anymore and it's open to the public. San Francisco's secret stairways are so much fun to climb with a friend, family member, or alone. It's calming when it's just you, and when you're with someone, it's like taking a mini adventure up an old wooden stairway or metal stairs that have vegetation growing all over them.

If you're traveling alone or want to go somewhere calm these are my favourite spots. I am quite the book worm and also one of those people that likes close to empty places, like cafes or in this case, City Lights Bookstore. City Lights is just amazing, to say the least. Visit Jack Early Park! It's the smallest park in the whole city where you can listen to the sea lions while sitting on the little two-person bench.

Moving onto shopping! San Francisco and the Bay Area in general have many unique little shops you won't find anywhere else. La Boutique: L'Art et La Mode is an adorable little shop with jewelry, shoes, and clothing. Harputs is such a beautiful store that shows different, bold fashion choices (I love it !!). Picnic is an adorable store with home goods, gifts and clothes. Welcome Stranger is a men's clothing store with more of a casual feel to it. Gravel & Gold has just about everything: journals, books, bags, clothes and more. Along with these shops, there are chain stores like Urban Outfitters, Zara, Topshop, American Apparel and more. 

Well, I sure wrote a lot and I am just about done! The locations, photos and more information will be below. The websites for certain places are bolded so click on em! I hope this was helpful to anyone that will be visiting this beautiful city anytime soon!

Crown and Crumpet Tea Stop Cafe Website

1746 Post Street, San Francisco

Smitten Ice Cream Website

432 Octavia Street #1a, San Francisco

Jack Early Park

San Francisco, CA 94133

Greenwich Steps on 231 Greenwich St. San Francisco

Sutro Baths Ruins and Cave - Point Lobos Ave & Merrie Way Golden Gate National Recreation Area

The Wave Organ in the Exploritorium

83 Marina Green Drive, San Francisco

Seward Street Slides

70 Corwin St, San Francisco

American Apparel

363 Grant Ave., San Francisco

1615 Haight Street, San Francisco

2174 Union Street, San Francisco

City Lights Website

261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco

Urban Outfitters

80 Powell Street, San Francisco

Harputs Website

109 Geary Street, San Francisco

La Boutique: L'Art et La Mode Website

414 Jackson Street #101, San Francisco

Picnic Website

1808 Polk Street, San Francisco

Welcome Stranger Website

460 Gough Street, San Francisco

3266 21st Street, San Francisco

Gravel & Gold Website

I do apologize for not having photos for all of the places I mentioned, I don't carry my camera around everywhere... just most places!

ari xx.

SUNNY SEASON

It's summer everyone! It seems to be more relieving this year than any. I'm just going to assume that's because I just graduated, so things were a bit more stressful this year round. 

Summer is an amazing time for everything. It's a time of relaxation and relief. No stress. No school. Although, it's a time to relax, I will be swamped. I plan to restart. This past year has been challenging and stressful and I came to a point where I stopped putting my full effort in my schoolwork because of my loss of self confidence in certain topics. I hope to reorganize my thoughts, my bedroom and my outlook on things. I hope to be optomistic and focus on the good, while still being aware of reality.

But let's not get too serious, summer is also a time to wear flowy dresses, drink lemonade during brunch and get ice cream before a trip to the beach!

Summer is the end of one thing but it's also the beginning of another. It's a time to refresh, prioritize and reorganize. It can be your clean slate. Your fresh start.

ari xx. 

EAST COAST BOUND

This post is extremely late due to my horrible procrastination and the fact that I just graduated so there was lots to do before school was over. I recently went to the east coast for an extremely educational trip with students from my school. The flight to D.C. was six restless hours long. I was sat in the middle seat and was expected to sleep through the flight. Of course, I was wide awake just about the whole time, leaning over my friend Dean to take "artsy" photos of the sky from the window. I will be posting photos on my Instagram from time to time on @a.shirgul. Once we landed, we were on the go. From museum to museum, we tiredly shuffled through every room, asking when we'll be getting to the hotel to sleep every once in a while. 

We visited just about every memorial, museum, cemetery and college around. My absolute favourite memorial had to be the Lincoln Memorial. Sadly, we were a bit rushed when we were there because of some sort of commotion causing police to arrive at the scene. Going to the Soldier's Home National Cemetery was the most depressing scene. At the time that we were there it was gloomy, windy and the rain was pouring hard, making the moment even more depressing. The amount of unknown soldiers that were buried there is heartbreaking. Georgetown University was beautiful. We had the opportunity to tour parts of the school and being my nerdy self, the library was my favourite place in the whole school. It was massive, with such a variety of different books.

As much as I would like to go on and on about my trip, that would bore everyone to death so I'm going to end these drawled out paragraphs. Enjoy the photos below! (the photos aren't in chronological order).

ari xx.