Thai Chile, Honey Thyme, Secret Breakfast

...are all totally imaginative ice cream flavors available at various ice cream shops in San Francisco.  Secret Breakfast, in particular, is one that has come up in my conversations with Karie several times now.  As a result (and also due to the general Shira love for ice cream), we started joking around about doing an ice cream tour of the city.  We decided then and there that it would be doable (and not even all that guilt-inducing) if we walked between locations.  We surmised that we could hit 4 or 5 shops in an afternoon.

{photo from Daily Candy}

This is perfect timing because Karie and Sam are coming for a visit at the end of this week today!  They are making the seemingly-endless slog up I-5 as I type.

Not one to procrastinate, last week I started designing the route for our tasty tour.  Though this city boasts great ice cream shops in the double digits, I narrowed my list to five.  Our tour will take us on a lopsided loop through Noe Valley, the Inner and Outer Mission, Duboce Triangle, and Bernal Heights.  I adjusted it so that we'll go through or past some of the nicest parks in the city--Holly Park, Dolores Park, Precita Park, and Bernal Hill Park.

I'm calling this undertaking "3 Girls, 5 Ice Cream Shops, 7.1 Miles."

Which shops made the oh-so-elite list, you ask?  Well, I chose Mitchell's, Bi-Rite Creamery*, Three Twins, Humphry Slocombe, and Maggie Mudd.

Practical considerations for this tour include wearing comfortable shoes, bringing a large amount of water, and limiting ourselves to one scoop at each joint. 

Of course, as I was mapping out the route, I started to calculate the probability of us burning more calories on our walk than we were planning to ingest at the ice cream shops.  Even with our 7.1 mile loop, which does include hiking up the north side of Bernal Hill (very steep in places), I don't think we'll burn more than we take in.

But that's okay.  You only live once.

Here's my ice cream-tastic Google map of the route:


View Larger Map

*Bi-Rite is not new to us.  But we love it so much, especially its heavenly salted carmel ice cream, that it simply had to be included.