San Fran Trip

We're back in KC after 3 1/2 days in San Francisco!  We had a great time, despite the chilly, rainy weather and are glad we made the trip out there!

We arrived on Sunday around 12:30 their time (2:30 our time).  We had not eaten lunch and didn't get any free snacks on the plane.  Therefore, I was starving!!  We waited for what seemed like forever for our luggage and then had to figure out how to get to our hotel.  We took a shuttle van (cheaper than a cab) but were unaware it'd be another million minutes before we actually made it downtown.  Who knew we'd have to wait for the van to fill before departing the airport??  Of course Craig harassed the driver and asked him once what we were waiting on....  At one point he said, "If we don't leave within 5 minutes, we're getting out and taking a cab."  We were impatient.  Tired from flying.  And hungry.  Luckily, we were headed out of the airport within 5 minutes.

We arrived to our hotel, and it looked just like it did in the pics.  Very old school.  (It turned out to be fine...good location!  Our only complaint was that it had no AC.)  We quickly dropped off our belongings and headed to the nearest burger joint, Honey Honey, a block away.  I'm not sure if I was just super hungry or if my burger was really that good!  Yum!

Notice the band-aid on Craig's eye? =)

First meal in 8 hours!
After scarfing down our food, we wondered around the Union Square area.  Union Square has some great shopping, but we pretty much just window shopped.  We were too tired to do otherwise.


I'm a big fan of palm trees.


San Fran Cable car!  Never rode on one... =(





That night, we went to Cliff House restaurant, a restaurant right on the water on the west side of San Fran.  Here's a pic I got from the Internet.  Too bad it was dark when we were there and we didn't see much of anything.  I'm sure it would have made for some great photos!


The mojitos were great!  I could have drank those all night!!  Craig's salmon was fantastic, but I wasn't a big fan of my meal...scallops.  I figured since I was in a new city, I should try something new.  I should have stuck with something I knew I liked.  Oh well.  I now know never to order scallops again.



Monday we had to be up early to catch our winery tour bus, so we stayed in Sunday night.  Here are some pics I snapped Monday morning of downtown San Fran.



Drinking coffee and waiting to board our winery bus

The bay bridge...different from the Golden Gate
Our Napa tour was amazing.  We took a tour bus and visited four different wineries.  Of course, we tasted many wines at each winery and bought a bottle of Merlot to bring back to Kansas!  (It rode home in my boot in our suitcase...and made it safely!)  Wine country was beautiful!  It was definitely a long, but enjoyable (8+ hour) day.


Look at that fog!




First winery - waiting for it to open


V.Sattui was the name of the winery

Using our tripod to try and get a good pic

The only sun we saw all trip!



Cheers at 10:30 a.m.!


Menu of wines to choose from

Second winery - known for their sparkling wine

The background is all wine bottles...empty I think

Craig's work of art

Learning all about sparkling wine - same thing as champagne but only in Champagne, France can they use that name.

Couple photo again thanks to my tripod (Craig was embarrassed)

Huge bottle 'o wine

Smaller one for Craig
An olive tree.  I had no idea olives grew on trees!

Where the grapes grow!

Wine train - that would have been fun!

The third winery of our tour.  They didn't have a cool sign.



Is that the sun peaking out again?

Fourth and final winery on our tour

Bellied up to the bar


Showing off the glass cork we got

Here's the ferry we took back to the bay area.  People actually ride this to and from work every day!

San Fran skyline from the water
I didn't feel well on Monday night after our all-day winery tour.  Hmmm....could it have been all the wine perhaps?  I'm blaming it on our messed up food schedule!  I wasn't sick-sick, but had a funny feeling in my stomach all night.  It worked in my favor, however, because we stayed in and watched the Bachelor finale!  All three hours of it!  Craig still thinks I was faking it....I promise you I was not!  I already knew from Internet gossip that he picked Emily, but was thrown a curve ball during the After the Final Rose drama.  I can't say I blame Emily.  Her concerns are legit and she can't move to Austin (with her 5-year old daughter) to live a normal life after six weeks of so-called "reality".  And though she was on the Bachelor and knew what Brad was doing with all the other girls, I agree with her that it'd be hard to watch him with the other girls when he said he knew she was "the one" from very early on.  I really hope her and Brad can work it out in the end...

Back to our trip.  By Tuesday morning I was feeling fine and we decided to play tourists all day.  We purchased tickets for a Hop On-Hop Off tour bus, which was to take us to the Golden Gate Bridge, Chinatown, Fisherman's Wharf, Ghirardelli Square, etc.  All was fine and dandy until about 10 minutes into our tour when it started raining.....and we were on the top deck of the bus.....that had no roof.  While everyone else decided to move to the bottom of the bus, we decided to make homemade ponchos out of garbage bags and stay right where we were.  Cool, I know.  One girl was even jealous and decided to copy us!

If you look really close, I'm on top!


Entrance to Chinatown

Fisherman's Wharf

Fisherman's Wharf

Fisherman's Wharf

This one speaks for itself

Here we are in our cool ponchos...how awesome do we look??

This is where the chocolate was started

Alcatraz - we would have loved to go on a tour but ran out of time

More of the wharf
Golden Gate Bridge....obviously



Getting ready to cross!





With my poncho

And without!


Back at the Wharf exploring

It was so cold, Craig bought a new hoodie....I thought I could suffer through it.

My first In-N-Out experience.

Having a beer during our break from the cold & rain.

Cheers to San Francisco!

Just being silly....

Pretending like I'm a model


Random sea gull


After running to Ghirardelli Square in a downpour, I wanted ice cream!

I ate every bite of it!

Typical San Fran houses

Never made it to the Full House house like I wanted, but these look sort of similar.

The hills of San Fran

Yes Mom, we bought these for our bikes...

Notice my new $19.99 jacket?  I couldn't deal with the cold any longer!  Cute, huh?

Hahahaha riding on an elephant on the streets on San Fran.

I forced him to do this!

This is hilarious!
After being tourists all day, we decided to go out for a sushi dinner.  There were sushi places EVERYWHERE!  After dinner, we headed to Top of the Mark, the bar on top of the Intercontinental Hotel recommended by my friend Erin.  It was a very classy place with great views of the city!
Craig's saki, in a box


Weird...



Mmmmmm makes me mouth water!

Up the hill to the bar

And up some more

And even more...we walked about 3 blocks of this!

Look at those parked cars!

Yes, I'm a math teacher and had to take a pic of this sign!
At the top of the hill looking down - that's a LONG way!

View of the city




At another bar.  I ordered a Moscow Mule because Oprah loves them.
Wednesday morning we headed back to Honey Honey for breakfast before leaving town.  They had some pretty great food!  Here's Craig at our spot and our last meal in San Fran! 

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Things I (we) learned while in San Fran:
  • It is a very expensive place to live and visit.  (The service wasn't great, either.)
  • On average, the temperature exceeds 75 degrees only 28 days per year.
  • The Golden Gate Bridge is 1.2 miles long.
  • The Bay Bridge (different from the Golden Gate) has two decks.
  • San Fran is home to one of the crookedest streets in the U.S.
  • Champagne and sparkling wine are the same things.  Champagne has that name because it's made in Champagne, France.
  • The 1906 earthquake destroyed the city, but it was quickly re-built.
  • The Macy's at Oak Park sucks compared with the Macy's downtown San Fran.
  • I take entirely too many pictures.  I posted 179 on Facebook just from a 3 1/2 day trip!  I'm pretty certain my blog space is almost maxed out due to this post along! =) 
We had a wonderful time and I look forward to our next vacay!

1 comment:

  1. Looks like you had a fantastic time. How was your first In-N-Out experience? Was it everything that Zach says it is?

    ReplyDelete