This weekend we took a couple days off skiing to go to San Francisco to see my parents who were in town visiting my sister Amy and her husband Mike. Amy and Mike are one of those couples who rock at entertaining and hosting guests, so I wasn’t surprised when they had the perfect Saturday planned out for us.

We started the morning off with a trip to the farmer’s market in the Ferry Building. The sights, sounds and smells were a lovely way to start the day.

We grabbed a quick bite of “Mexican Breakfast” food, which consisted of sauce-drenched tortilla chips, eggs, beans and avocado.

After the Farmer’s Market in the Ferry Building, we headed into China Town for Dim Sum at City View Dim Sum. If you haven’t tried Dim Sum before, it’s a very unique dining experience.

Basically as soon as you sit down, waitresses will wheel around carts of various Chinese foods, like dumplings, chicken feet, sticky buns etc. You pick what you want and eat it Tapas style with your table.

It was a great way to sample a lot of different Chinese cuisine with everyone weighing in on what they liked and disliked as we went.

From there we walked through China Town and caught a bit of a parade taking place to help raise money for a local martial arts group.

We made our way through San Francisco’s China Town until we got to our next destination – tea tasting! Luke happens to be a big tea fan, so he was especially excited about this part of the day.

We were greeted by a boisterous man who asked that we call him “Uncle.” He led us through the tea-tasting experience all while touting the health benefits of tea. To prove his point, he asked us to guess how old he was. My dad guessed 60.

Turns out he’s 80!! Whoa- if tea drinking makes you look 20 years younger, then sign me up!

We tasted about eight teas in all and at the end felt like we had made a new friend – Luke especially.

Rounding out our day of “Asian appreciation” in San Francisco, we all headed to Suchada Thai Massage. This was our first experience with a Thai massage and I have to say it was the most unique and experiential massages I’ve ever gotten.

The massage itself is almost painful, but in a good way. Your masseuse literally walks on your back, uses their elbows to dig into knots and stretches you in ways you didn’t think you could stretch.

There were times I felt like I needed to tell them to stop because it was so uncomfortable, but right when I thought I hit my threshold, they moved on. In the end, I left feeling totally loose. I could tell they did a lot to help my back and neck.

On the way home we stopped for some pictures by the water.

Thanks for coming to visit mom and dad and thanks for showing us a great time in San Francisco Amy and Mike!