San Francisco, CA

 

WARNING: Many (very) late posts ahead…

I can’t believe its already been a month since my San Francisco vacation with Chris (and that its taken me so long to blog about it.. OK, I guess that is the believable part).

Chris and I left Atlanta on Wednesday, May 30th for San Francisco, CA. This was our first vacation together and our first time going to California. After a 5 hour flight, we landed, took BART to our hotel, checked in, and immediately started exploring. We ended up randomly finding Lombard Street, the “crookedest street.”

 

That is the massive hill we trekked up to get to Lombard Street.

 

View from the top!

That night we met up with Chris’s friend, Nick, and his girlfriend, Lucy, who live outside of San Francisco, for dinner and dessert. By about 9pm San Francisco time (which was 12am Atlanta time), I was pooped and having trouble keeping my eyes open.

Thursday, after forcing myself to sleep in past 5am San Fran time, we got up, got ready, ate breakfast, and hit the streets. We walked through Chinatown and made our way toward Haight-Ashbury, a neighborhood known for where hippies used to hang out. As we walked, we stopped and walked through a beautiful park – Buena Vista park. Once we got to our destination, we did some window shopping and ate lunch. Then we walked a little further to the Golden Gate Park, where we bought tickets to the Botanical Gardens and saw a few redwood trees along with some other pretty plants.

Outside the entrance to Chinatown.

Chris outside the house the Grateful Dead lived in for a few years.

As we were leaving the park, I started to really dread the walk back. I made the mistake of trying to be a cute tourist and instead of wearing shoes comfortable for walking, I wore ballet flats that are usually really comfy, but not for trekking up hills for about 4 miles. As we were walking back through Haight-Ashbury, I broke down and told Chris I needed new shoes. Luckily we found a store that sold Toms, which I have been eyeing for a while and debating to buy since Tam raved about hers last Thanksgiving. After putting them on (even though they didn’t match my outfit), I was ready to walk across the city and back again!

Thursday night, we took the BART out of the city to Nick and Lucy’s apartment, where they cooked us a delicious dinner of salmon and steak. After dinner, the boys smoked cigars on the porch and the girls fell sleep on the couch to Real Housewives.

Friday, we actually took time to explore around Chinatown. We ate an authentic Chinese lunch, did some shopping, and visited the fortune cookie factory, the only place where they still make fortune cookies by hand. It was literally in a back alley in a room about the width of a closet. And the fortune cookies were delicious! Friday night, we met up with Nick and Lucy and went to a Giants game. Chris and I decided we couldn’t go to the game without some sweet Giants gear so we ended up buying matching orange shirts with a giraffe on them (the giraffe is supposed to be one of the players who has a long neck – we didn’t know what it meant until after we bought the shirts). The game was a lot of fun (and very cold!) and we enjoyed watching Lucy really get in to her cheering and screaming at the other team.

Saturday, Chris and I walked down to Fisherman’s Wharf, where I met my Aunt Victoria and cousins, Katie and Luke, while Chris played golf with Nick. I ate lunch with my family at Rainforest Café (the kids’ pick) and then we walked up and down the wharf, doing some site seeing and ended our day drinking hot chocolate, trying to keep warm. After golf, Chris met us at Fisherman’s Wharf and then we took the ferry out to Alcatraz. Alcatraz was so cool! I am a huge history nerd and LOVE tours like this! We got there and each got individual audio headsets that took us on a tour around the prison. Once those finished, you got a chance to look around on your own and do a few extra tours. Chris and I got a few souvenirs and then explored some outside in the freezing temperatures while most everyone stayed inside. Then we took the tour titled “how to rob a bank” which was very interesting!

 

Sunday was our Golden Gate bridge day! We rented bikes and biked across the Golden Gate Bridge and down to Sausalito, where we parked the bikes, got some ice cream and did some window shopping. We missed the ferry back, so we decided just to bike back and in the end, biked about 10 miles that day! The views were incredible and besides the Alcatraz tour, this was our next favorite vacation outing.

Sunday night was our “fancy dinner night” and Chris treated me to a very nice dinner and dessert at a 20’s themed restaurant called Bix. The restaurant was super nice and had a live piano player and the food was ah-ma-zing!

Monday was a rainy morning, which was ok, since it was the one day we didn’t have any set site-seeing plans. We ate lunch and I had my first bowl of clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl – one of the things my grandparents told me I MUST eat while in San Francisco. Then Chris surprised me with a spa day! Of course, it was his way of keeping me busy so he could squeeze in another round of golf with Nick, but I still think it was very nice and thoughtful of him to take the time to research good spas in the area and book the appointments for me instead of just going golfing and leaving me to my own devices (which to be honest would have been me going shopping). I spent the afternoon being pampered like a princess with a facial, manicure, and pedicure and relaxing in a hot tub and steam room. After my appointments, Chris and I took a very chilly cable car ride up to a pizza place for dinner, which ended up being a bust since we last minute decided to walk to the Financial District location, which was already closed, so we headed back to our hotel and ordered it in instead and packed for our flight the next morning.

All in all, it was a GREAT (first) vacation! It was just what we needed and was very relaxing!