San Francisco

Ryan and I had such a wonderful long weekend to San Francisco!  It's our 9 year anniversary coming up, and we're hoping that we'll be traveling to China sometime near our 10 year anniversary...maybe???... so we decided to take a trip this year instead. The view above is from our hotel window.  We stayed in Union Square which was a great location, close to everything.

Here's Ryan in front of Niketown.  We HAD to go in afterward. 

So the first day we arrived it was a little after lunchtime, so we just left our hotel and walked around.   We first went to Chinatown. 

It was so colorful and vibrant, I loved it!  It made me excited to go to China, although I'm sure not all of China looks like this :).

We then walked through a beautiful park, and ended up at Fisherman's Wharf.  I took tons of pictures but I tried to spare all of you and just put in a few of my favorites.  Here's Pier 39 with the sea lions.  We didn't walk around to the pier that's right next to them, we stayed on this side.  Can you see them lying down there on the docks?

We then walked all around Fisherman's Wharf and walked past Boudin (a yummy restuarant known for their sourdough.  I had to take a picture of this creation for Cooper and Jackson)

Then we just kept walking and seeing the sights, marveling at streets like this!  It was SO steep and I was amazed to see people RUNNING up them.  I had a hard time walking up them!

We had to see the famous crooked street!  Crazy isn't it?

This is the view from the crooked street. 

We had reservations at this restaurant.  Very very good.  From here we walked back to the hotel! Very very VERY far.  We walked so much that first day, my feet were killing me!  But it was fun and made me feel better for all the ice cream I consumed on the trip.

Our second day we took the trolley down to Fisherman's Wharf instead of walking the entire way

and decided to rent bikes to ride across the Golden Gate Bridge.  See it in the background?

Beautiful, isn't it?  (the bridge, not us :)

We lucked out and had GORGEOUS weather.  60s and 70s, sunny.

We rode our bikes to the top of this hill and this was the view of San Fran.  I almost had to get off my bike and walk it, it was so steep!  Luckily most of it was flat, I hadn't ridden a bike in forever!

Right before riding across the bridge.

We rode our bikes over to Sausalito and ate at this restaurant.  VERY yummy fries! 

We had every intention of riding our bikes from Sausalito to nearby woods to see some historic trees.  After we took a break, had lunch, we just decided to relax in Sausalito.  So we got out our books, got ice cream, and sat on a bench facing the water and just relaxed.  It was SO nice, just what I wanted for our vacation. 

We then took the ferry back to San Fran. Can you see it in the background?  I'd say the ferry was much easier than riding the bike!

Here's where we stayed.

The last full day we were there we met up with good friends Stephanie and Rich and their kids Zoe and Will.  Isn't she precious?  She's a mini Stephanie.

He's a cutie pie too!

Here's me and Stephanie.  They live in downtown San Francisco so it was fun finding out all about what it's like to live there.

After we met up with them we went and relaxed on the beach again.  It was just gorgeous!

Then we went and got a bread bowl here.  Everyone told us we needed to!

Here's Ryan relaxing. 

One last view of San Fran.   We sure missed our kids, it was very strange not having them with us.  We both missed them for the pictures too, neither one of us wanted to be the one in the pictures, but we had no kids to stick in front to take pictures of! :)  They stayed with Laura and Tom and had an absolute blast.  They didn't miss us one bit and didn't want to go home afterward, so I'd say it was successful all the way around!