In May Daniel and I went on our yearly trip together, this time to San Francisco, California. My mom flew in to Texas to watch the kids while we were gone.
When I went to pick up my mom from the airport just a few hours before Daniel and I flew out, it turned out that we were wearing the exact same pants! (If you are wondering how we own the same pants, it’s because when one of us – me in this case – finds something great at Ross, sometimes we call the sisters and Mom in case they want to go find them at their Ross). I call them my fancy pants, but really they are the softest, most comfortable pants in the world, and ideal for traveling. I guess my mom thought the same thing. I guess we are both awesome.
I think Daniel and I love planning out our trips almost as much as we love going on them. This year was no exception. For weeks and months before we left, we planned and researched and got all the details down in a spreadsheet. The basic idea for our trip was this: fly into Sacramento on Wednesday night. Thursday morning drive through Napa Valley and down into San Francisco. Then keep driving south through Monterey to Big Sur, where we would explore for a little bit and then stay the night. Friday morning drive back up the coast, return the rental car, and stay the rest of the time in San Francisco and the bay area. Fly home Tuesday.
Like this:
(I guess if you want the short version of our trip, that was it. For pictures and more details, keep reading).
At the airport in Sacramento, next to a towering sculpture of luggage.
Thursday morning we got up early and started the drive from Sacramento to Napa Valley. We ate breakfast at the Boon Fly Café in Napa, and it was one of our favorite meals of the trip. Here we are with our hot chocolate and giant breakfasts:
Plus, swings:
We drove through Napa Valley and Sonoma, and were impressed with all of the gorgeous vineyards:
Then we drove down to the Marin Headlands, which are just north of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. We drove around for awhile, and then stopped at a remote parking lot and decided to hike down this little trail to the ocean. There was a little rabbit on the trail, which might have made us think of our kids for a little bit.
The weather was chilly, which felt really nice, and the beach was so pretty.
After we hiked back up we drove to a few lookouts where you can see the Golden Gate Bridge in the background:
Then we drove down to the bridge and walked out onto it a little ways. We saw a sea lion swimming below (exciting):
Our original plan was then to get back in the car, drive across the bridge, and continue our way south, but once we were on the bridge, we wondered if maybe we should try walking all the way across it and back. We knew it would take awhile, and would mean cutting out our plans to stop and eat dinner in Monterey at a fancy restaurant if we wanted to get to Big Sur while it was still light.
We decided to go for it; we thought we might always be sad if we had the chance to walk all the way across the Golden Gate Bridge and we didn’t take it, but we wouldn’t really be sad to miss a fancy restaurant. (We decided that was a good rule of thumb on our trips: experiences > specific food plans.
Anyway, we started walking (quickly). It was so windy and pretty cold. Here we are at about the middle of the bridge – you can see San Francisco in the background. I get weird anxiety when I’m up high or on bridges, and I start to think I’m going to do something crazy like grab my ring or my phone and throw them over the edge all of a sudden. I think because really I’m scared of how awful that would be if I did that? So I imagine doing it? Please tell me I’m not the only one who does this. Anyway, I had to walk with my hands clenched into fists so I was sure my ring and phone would stay safe.
On the other side. Happy we made it. Not really looking forward to the walk back. But glad we decided to do it.
Done:
Panoramic view of the bridge and San Francisco:
After that we drove over the bridge and headed down the coast toward Big Sur. Along the way we stopped at a remote little beach to play around and look for crabs (they were all over the place! Our kids would have been in heaven!).
The first place we explored once we got down to Big Sur was Pfeiffer Beach. It was gorgeous.
The waves were crashing through the hole in the middle of the rock, and making me feel tempted to swim out there (I didn’t):
Then we drove over to McWay Falls, which turned out to be one of the prettiest places I’ve ever been:
That night we stayed at a tiny little cabin at the Ripplewood Resort in Big Sur.
Kind of fun, because it was only for one night.
The next morning we got up early and headed back up the coast. The drive along Highway 1 is so pretty.
When we got up to Carmel we decided to do the 17-Mile Dive (a famous scenic drive through the Pebble Beach and Del Monte Forest area). Lots of pretty views.
After that we went to Cannery Row and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Then we drove back up to San Francisco, turned in our rental car, and checked in to our hotel. We loved our room. It had a little sitting area with a great view of the city.
We also love going to baseball games on our trips, and crossing off different stadiums from our list (Daniel has a goal to get to them all – he’s getting pretty close).
We had tickets for the Giants game on Friday afternoon, so we walked over to AT&T Park from our hotel, stopping first for a late lunch at The American Grilled Cheese Kitchen, which turned out to be really, really good. I ordered the mushroom gruyere sandwich, a surprising move on my part (I don’t even like mushrooms), but it just sounded so fantastic! And it was! This was the description: “fontina and gruyere cheese, roasted wild mushrooms, roasted potatoes, melted leeks, caramelized onions, and thyme butter on levain”. It was one of the best sandwiches I’ve ever had, plus they serve all of their grilled cheeses with a whole apple to eat afterward, which is of course the perfect thing to do.
At the game:
Looking down from the back of the stadium into the bay; I’ve seen on TV how there are always people at Giant’s games out there in kayaks trying to get balls that land in the water. It was cool to see that in person. They must have been freezing, though. It was really cold at the game. Texas has never even considered being cold in May, so the chilly weather of San Francisco kept surprising me.
The next morning we started out with a tour of Chinatown. So many interesting things:
A Buddhist temple:
A prescription from a Chinese herbal pharmacy:
And (Henry’s favorite), a bucket full of live frogs at the food market. It was right next to the fruits and vegetables – you could just reach in and grab whichever one you wanted to cook for dinner.
Also that day, the California Academy of Sciences:
And a magic show!
This was our first magic show ever, and we didn’t really know what to expect, but it was actually pretty great. I even got to participate in one of the acts – the magician asked certain members of the audience to write down details to fill in the blanks on a vacation story he had on a board. I was supposed to secretly write down the check-out time I would pick if I was on my dream vacation. I picked 8:00 pm, because that seemed tricky to guess. But I guess it wasn’t tricky enough, because he was able to use his magical mind to figure out all of our answers exactly right.
The next morning we took a boat out to Alcatraz:
We got headphones and did the audio-tour, which was great. I guess I’m just a sucker for following directions, but I love when they say things like, “now walk ahead 10 steps and then turn to your right and you’ll see a sign”, and then you do it, and it’s right! So rewarding. The tour was very interesting, and we learned a lot about the history of Alcatraz and some of the escape attempts.
Views of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge from Alcatraz:
When we got back from Alcatraz we headed over to the Exploratorium, where we saw lots of neat things, including this model of San Francisco made out of toothpicks:
That night we did Lombard Street, and fish and chips at Fishermans Wharf:
Monday was our last day in San Francisco. We took a train across the bay into Oakland to go to a baseball game at the Oakland Coliseum. The weather was much hotter inland than it was in San Francisco, and the sun was beating down and I was feeling sad that I had left my Mariners hat at the hotel, but then it turned out to be free hat giveaway day at the stadium, and everyone got an Oakland A’s hat. Happy day.
The A’s won 10-0, which was fun, and both Cespedes and Donaldson (who were on my fantasy baseball team) hit home runs, so that was also fun.
That night back in San Francisco we went and did some exploring in the Mission District. The restaurant we had planned to eat dinner at was closed (that happens to us a lot – despite all our planning, lots of times we end up figuring out things as we go, which works out great). We did find this little Salvadorian place, and it was excellent.
Dolores Park in the Mission District: amazing views, amazing people-watching.
Here we are playing rummy that night in the lounge at the top of our hotel. We should probably have 20 more pictures of us playing rummy on this trip – a good friend of ours had taught us how to play a few weeks before, and we were a little addicted.
For example, here we are playing rummy again the next morning on the train we took to get to the San Jose airport:
We also attempted to play on the airplane as we were flying home, using the little flip-down tables, but you will just have to imagine that with no picture.
That’s it for San Francisco. Hooray for couple trips every year. I highly recommend it.
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