San Francisco - Adventure in January

Written Monday, 1/20 at the San Francisco Airport:

Wow, did the days go by fast!  Seems like I just got here and now I am back at the airport ready to fly home.  My feet and legs are sore from all the hills and treks and my face is sore from doing so much laughing and smiling!  What a great girls weekend we had.  Spending so much quality time with Elisha and Zoe was wonderful! 

The smartest thing we did (thank you Elisha!) was take the Big Bus tour.  If you are heading for San Fran anytime soon, I highly recommend it.  The bus loads at the Embarcadero near Fisherman’s Wharf and tours the entire city. It even goes over the Golden Gate Bridge and back.  Our bus had a great tour guide who never stopped talking the entire tour - and had facts about every neighborhood, including interesting stories about significant historic events and the people who lived there. We learned so much.  This really helped us decide what places we wanted to go back to and explore more fully.  The pass is good for 24 hours so you can hop on and off as often as you want, there are 20 bus stops throughout the city. Our guide also gave us the inside scoop on restaurants, events, and the best place to catch the trolley cars. 

On Saturday, we were lucky enough to spend some time with Elisha’s friend since middle school, Heather.  She is a journalist and lives in San Francisco. We went to her apartment, which was fun, being able to see inside one of the old buildings.  It was very cute, and interesting, all sorts of nooks and odd areas. We spent the afternoon with her, walked across the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset, had dinner at a great little neighborhood taco place, then hung out for a couple of hours catching up at a coffee shop.  It was a great time and I had the chance to ask her a bunch of questions about self-publishing.  She is in the process of publishing her first book, and has been writing professionally since college.  A good resource!

Tickets to Alcatraz were hard to come by and the only tickets we could get were for this morning at 9:10.  We were up early and at the dock just seconds before the boat took off.  This is also a must for any trip to the city.  The view from the harbor is spectacular!  Looking back on the city and the Golden Gate off in the distance is iconic!  We heard that the sunset trip is the best, but it gets booked weeks in advance!  However, this mornings trip was pretty fantastic!  The sky was clear and blue, not a cloud in the sky and no fog in sight. It couldn’t have been better.  The actual “rock” is a real experience.  The prison and grounds is something you have to see to truly comprehend.  I was surprised to learn that the families of the prison staff actually lived there and the kids were ferried back and forth to school. There is a guided audio tour that makes it easy to follow and is narrated by some of the original guards and prisoners. It was so interesting!

We ate lots of great food.  Historic Joe’s in North Beach, Little Italy. Din Sum in Chinatown, at a place President Obama ate in 2012. The #1 rated fish place on Yelp called Codmother’s Fish and Chips.  Plus we ate several meals at the famous Boudin’s Bakery, clam chowder in a yummy sourdough bread bowl, and some other decadent goodies.  And, of course we had to have hot fudge sundaes at Ghirardelli’s Chocolate Shop. 

It was a great time, memories I will cherish for life! The best Christmas present ever! Spending quality time with Elisha and Zoe was a true gift.  Seeing the city through Zoe's eyes was so much fun and she is so inquisitive and curious that it really taught us all so much about the city, the people and it’s history.  San Francisco is a one-of-a-kind city.  If you haven’t been there you must plan a trip! If it’s been years since you visited, then include it on your travel plans soon. you'll be glad you did!  

If you’ve been there, write a comment below and tell me your favorite things about San Francisco.