Tuesday Travel Talk

San Francisco!

For our one-year anniverary roadtrip in May 2006, the first place we headed to was San Francisco. I had never been there before and was pretty excited to see it, and we stayed two nights in a really pretty Hilton hotel. For the rest of our trip we stayed in cheap Motel 6's, but we splurged on the nicer hotel in San Francisco and I booked it myself at a discount through my travel agency. The hotel was really beautiful and the bed was so comfortable!
The Hilton was located in Union Square, and right next to the cable car lines. Of course we rode the cable cars quite a few times, and I loved them. What a fun way to get around a city!

We went to all the main touristy places in San Francisco, the main one being Fisherman's Wharf. We saw the sea lions lying on the docks, ate sourdough bread pizza and soup in bread bowls, and browsed through shops. We also tried to avoid all the crazy homeless people who live there and would just walk right up and talk to you.

San Francisco bay was really beautiful, and I could see why it was so famous. Here are a couple of my favorite pictures I took of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz. We didn't actually make the trip to Alcatraz, but we viewed it across the water.

Here we are at the Palace of Fine Arts. I had studied that building in a humanities class and really wanted to see it. It was very pretty, located in the middle of a lush park.

We did tons of walking when we were in San Francisco. In fact, the best way to do the city would be to not have a car at all with you, and just ride cable cars and walk everywhere you need to go. Parking in San Francisco is the worst I've ever seen anywhere, and since we were on a road trip and had our car with us we had to pay $40 a day just to park at the hotel! Horrible! But I loved walking along the waterfront and seeing views like this one:

We ate at some fun restaurants at Fisherman's Wharf, like Bubba Gump's and the Crab House. Stephen loved the crab he got to order at the Crab House, and he got a bib for it and everything.

It was always fun to walk by the Boudin Sourdough Bread factory, because they shaped the bread in their windows into all kinds of fish, lobsters, crabs, and crocodiles.

We didn't actually go in the water (brrrr, too cold!), but we did get to walk on the beach and watch the windsurfers. It looked like fun!

One of the best places we went while we were there was Ghiradelli Square. I don't have a picture of it, but we had the yummiest warm cookie sundae with a big, delicious chocolate chip cookie in the bottom, two kinds of ice cream, and Ghiradelli's hot fudge over the top. I drool just thinking about it! I'd go back for sure, just to have another sundae like that and ride the cable cars again.

As we were leaving to drive up through Oregon, we drove across the Golden Gate Bridge. We had a really fun time in San Francisco and saw some of the craziest people I've ever seen anywhere in the world.