Last Monday morning we were up bright and early to start the week…well Justin a little bit earlier than me :). Justin had a full work day ahead of him and I had hours of unpacking and organizing to do. We had made sure to save leftovers from dinner the night before so we could at least have lunch for the day. Keep in mind we had NOTHING in the apartment to eat. Getting groceries was definitely a major priority for the day.

Interesting building along the way to the farmer's market.

Call us spoiled, but we’re used to grocery stores being convenient. You drive to one, get what you need, and drive home. Or you can walk. In San Diego we had a Ralph’s about a block away. Easy. Well, that’s not the case here. There isn’t a Trader Joe’s or a Whole Foods anywhere near walking distance and driving here is a semi-nightmare. Tons of weird one-way streets, not to mention the horrendous parking. We decided to try walking about 7 blocks to a farmer’s market on the water.

Inside the Ferry Marketplace.

The Ferry Market Building is pretty awesome. It’s home to several specialty shops that have pretty much anything you could want. Unfortunately, the prices are also insane. We would have paid double to get everything we needed there! We did get a loaf of bread and some really delicious lemon olive oil. We had walked all the way there so we couldn’t walk away empty handed right??

Acme Breads.

Incredible California olive oils.

We also got to stop in at Boccalone, which is chef Chris Cosentino’s small sandwich/meat shop. We’ve seen this guy on tons of stuff on the Food Network and were dying to try his “salumi cone”. It’s basically a paper cone filled with an assortment of his meats to try. Delicious! We split one and it was the perfect afternoon snack.

After we had explored every inch of the building, we started our trek to our car. Whew! These hills can kick your butt. Seriously. By the time we made it to our car, we were both ready to give up finding food and just starve. After careful consideration of the pros and cons of this plan, we decided to press on. Luckily both grocery stores we needed to visit had parking. Sweet!!

Now that's a hill!

Seven huge bags and two grocery stores later, we were heading back to the apartment. By this point it was almost 8:00pm and we were tired and starving. Not a great combo. Since we have to park so far from our apartment, we realized there was no way we could carry all the bags at one time and it would be incredibly obnoxious to make two trips. Justin decided to drop me off at the building with all the groceries and go find parking while I waited. I should mention that our building entrance is on an alley that also happens to be a one-way (sounds much sketchier than it is!). So picture us struggling to get all these massive grocery bags out of the car and into the lobby of the building as cars are piling up behind us waiting to for us to move. Lovely, right?

So there I am sitting behind a locked gate in our apartment lobby waiting for Justin. And waiting. And waiting some more. Then he calls me. He accidently got on a one-way street with no way to turn off of it. Twenty or so minutes later and he finally finds parking and makes his way back to the apartment. We struggle up the stairs, unpack the food, and make dinner.

The morale of the story is be grateful for convenient grocery stores and nice people who don’t honk when you take forever to unload groceries!