DFT16 - San Francisco

I officially love San Francisco! I think I might even love it more than, New York City. It is nice and cool...just light jacket weather all the time.  I don't think it ever got above 70 degrees the whole time we were there.  Which if you know me, means that I was somewhat cold, but it was nice to be in a city and not sweating.  There is a ton of stuff to do and see and we just barley scratched the surface.  I just really love San Francisco!

We left Yosemite Thursday morning to drive into the city which was about 3 hours away.  Along the way we stopped to see John Muir's home site.  It was a really neat house and I have never seen a house ran by NPS that let you go into all parts of the home like it did.  It would have been nice to spend more time at the house, but at least we got to see it.  As we left we got about ten minutes down the road and realized how close we were to the Rosie The Riveter National Historic Site and decided to stop.  As we were pulling into the parking lot we saw the Mountain Hardware Employee Store in the same complex, but all employee stores require a special pass to get in.  Inside the site Daniel and the park ranger chatted it up about some US History standards, I'm pretty sure I wrote down about 10 books for him to read.  BUT she also told us if we ate at the restaurant next door they would provide us with a pass to the Mountain Hardware store....so guess where we ate lunch? We finally left the complex about 2 hours later....with a large Mountain Hardware bag in tow.  I won't say how much we spent....but we got close to $800 worth of gear!  Once we finally arrived in San Fran we drove across the Golden Gate Bridge first thing....and we stopped at Fort Point which is underneath the bridge.  Even though I almost killed us at the toll road trying to turn for Fort Point...it was worth it with the amazing views of the bridge.  The rest of the day we spent seeing mostly tourist stuff.  We walked to Lombard Street.  Then we drove over and walked around the Haight Ashbury neighborhood...which for those of you that don't know (because I didn't) that's were the Grateful Dead lived.  We even got to see their house. After having a coffee in Haight Ashbury we drove to see the painted ladies and I drove over to see the actual Full House house.  We left the city pretty early to drive to our campsite, which was about an hour outside of the city.  On our way we stopped to eat dinner in this really neat town called Peteluma.  It was so cute and had some many cute stores and boutiques, but all of them were already closed :(

Friday morning we got up relatively early to get a head start on our day.  We drove into the city with the understanding that we would stop and take more pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge...haha jokes on us....it was covered in fog and you couldn't even see the bridge.  We had read that the San Francisco Mint opened up at 9am. So we parked the car near Fisherman's Wharf and took a historic cable car down to Market Street.  Again, jokes on us...we didn't read the fine print about the mint...because the San Fran Mint is opened to the public...and I'm not even sure its in that building. But we did get to see the Old Mint Building and where the San Fran Chronicle is.  There were lots of shops but most didn't open until 10am.  We walked up to Union Square, where I found a huge fabric store...it had 4 floors of fabric...so we drank coffee and waited for it to open.  I am really glad we rode the Cable Car early because every other time we tried to get on the line was either too long or it took forever for one to come, so I finally figured out how to ride the Street Cars.  We had lunch at Gott's near Pier 1....I tried Garlic Fries...which I have officially decided they must be a San Fran thing...but they are amazing! We had a tour of Alcatraz at 1:30....to be honest I wasn't looking forward to it.  I was imagining the disaster that was trying to visit the Statue of Liberty.  I will admit I was wrong.  The ferry company was very well organized and everything ran on time.  It only took 15 to 20 mins to ride the ferry to the island and then once you were there you could take any ferry back.  We did the self guided tour and saw some really neat stuff.  I was most intrigued by the cafeteria and all the statistics about how much food was served daily and yearly.  I found a book about a girl that grew up on Alcatraz because he dad was a guard....I didn't buy it but would love to read it.  After Alcatraz we walked through Pier 39.  We had coffee and cookies from the Bischoff Cookie Company and Boudine Bakery.  We did get to walk down to see the Sea Lions, but I didn't have the zoom lens with me and didn't get great pictures.  We walked through Fisherman's Wharf or as I like to call it the Gatlinburg strip of San Fran :) and finally made it to Ghirardelli Square, where of course we bought chocolate!  We had only paid for parking until 6pm and already purchased a parking pass for the Giants game that night, so even though it was only 3 miles to the stadium we went to move our car.  Huge Mistake! It took over 1.25 hours to drive those 3 miles.  I'm telling myself that its was just because of ballgame traffic, since traffic had not been that bad before.  Since it took so long to get there and because security was pretty heavy it took us until the 2nd inning to make it to our seats.  We were up pretty high, but were in what is called a view box and had a pretty could view from the 3rd base line. However, if you ever go to a giants game...sit on the first base line because you get a better view of the Bay.  It was a pretty good game between the Giants and the Phillies. The Giants were trying to make a comeback but we left in the 8th to get a head start on traffic and because we were staying an hour away.  I was sad we missed the Prince themed fireworks show after the game :(

I found the US Birkenstock Headquarters outside of San Fran but it was closed every time we drove by and I never had a chance to make it to Sonoma Valley.  All reasons that I must go back! Daniel mentioned that maybe we could find a way to go back on a Babymoon....wishful thinking...but hey at least he is talking about the potentially of having a baby ;)