San Francisco

We’ve spent the last two days exploring San Francisco, and we’ve loved it. I have to say that we liked it much better than L.A.! It is such an easy city to navigate, parking was always readily available, and there was lots to do in a compact area. It’s a lovely city with tons of character and history!

We got into the city yesterday afternoon about 2:30. We immediately went over to the Golden Gate Bridge and walked about 1/4 of the way out. We took lots of photos. It was simply too windy for me to handle going any further. We enjoyed reading all of the statistics about the amount of cable that was used in constructing it, it really was an engineering wonder.

After that, we headed up to the Golden Gate Park and explored the Japanese Tea Garden. It was neat, but we all agreed that it was much less impressive than the Sarah P. Duke gardens in Durham, which are much more extensive and they’re FREE. The one thing that the kids did love about the Japanese Tea Garden was the drum bridge. They insisted on going up and down several times. Once was enough for me, The going up was fine, but the coming down was a little less dignified.

Our last stop before heading to our hotel was to jolt over to Alamo Square and photograph the “Painted Ladies.” The kids enjoyed playing on a playground just across the street from the Ladies. They especially loved the fact that their were tons of dogs and they even enjoyed petting a few.

The highlight of the evening was definitely driving the hills. I knew that the city was hilly, but seriously, it is hilly! Like, roller coaster grade hilly. Ryan got a real thrill out of getting to the top of a hill where we couldn’t see over the edge and then gunning it, just long enough to get squeals from all of us. There were honestly a couple of times when I thought that the back end was going to flip over the front end. It was insane, but we definitely made some memories!

This morning, we rode the ferry over to Alcatraz. The kids have a book about it that they’ve read over and over, so they taught Ryan and I a few things while we were waiting to board the boat. It really is a neat place. A 45 minute audio tour of the cell house is included with the ferry ride ticket, and it really makes the place come alive. We all agreed it was something we would recommend to friends.

Alcatraz, from the ferry.

Abe, trying out a cell at Alcatraz.

We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the city. We ate a lunch complete with Boudin’s sourdough- a San Francisco standard. Ryan tried the classic clam chowder bread bowl, while I opted for a sandwich. We really enjoyed watching them craft the breads through the factory window as we explored the Fisherman’s Wharf area. We also got to see the sea lions that migrate into the pier area. That was a hit with the kiddos!

Yummy sourdough bread bowl

The bread baker was making sea turtles while we were watching.

Of course, we made a detour to Ghiradelli Square where we forced ourselves to consume some delicious chocolate treats. Oh my, I can’t believe that Hershey would have anything on that stuff! It was insanely good, and the worst part was deciding which of the 3 Ghiradelli stores on the block to explore.

After that, we finally made our way to a cable car and rode our way up to Chinatown. By this point, we were a good distance from our car and I had some serious calories to purge. So, we started our way back across town on foot. We walked at least 25 blocks both UPhill and down, just enjoying Chinatown, North Beach, Coit Tower, and meandering our way back to the pier. Our biggest adventure in that part of the day was definitely when we had to find a potty. We went into one of these little booth things that are randomly scattered across the city. We were quite the sight trying to figure out how to get the push button door open, closed, secure, etc. If we didn’t already look like tourists, I’m sure the photo we snapped before we walked away secured our tourist status.

Here are the men turning the car before we got on.

The entrance to Chinatown

The source of our toilet adventure

As we were leaving the city, we hopped on I-80 East and it hit me that we are officially headed home at this point. All this time, we’ve been making our way west, and now, we have made a definitive turn back toward the Atlantic. We all agreed that while we’ve had a great time, it’s time to turn toward home. Though, the adventures aren’t over yet, we’ve still got a few cool things to see as we spend a week traveling home!