San Fransisco

Aaron and I had a chance to take a quick trip to San Fransisco over the 4th of July weekend. Aaron has been there 2 or 3 other times, but this was my first time. We stayed in the Marriott down by Union Square. Shelby and Gretchen went to Island Park with Aaron's parents for the weekend and the following week.

We left on Thursday and stayed through Sunday afternoon. Here are some of the highlights.

1. We got to ride the SF rapid transit, called BART, to and from the airport. It was really noisy, but it was easy.

2. We walked from Union Square all the way down to the warf. It took us a couple of hours. We were looking for a place called Mama's for breakfast, but by the time we got there the line was too long.

3. We walked through Chinatown. I swear I didn't recognize most of the fruit/veggies in the stands along the way. That part of town smelled weird as well. We looked for a little buddha to buy for the girls, because we call them buddha, but weren't able to find one. I have a couple cool pictures from this walk.

4. Our first full day there (July 4th) took us to Alcatraz. The day was beautiful and about 65-70 degrees. The island was really interesting. The coolest part of me was when we walked in to the dining hall and listened to a park ranger talk about the life of Al Cappone. He had about 90 minutes worth of history on that guys life. I also like listening to the audio tour and the real inmates and prison guards that walked us through the parts of the prison. The audio tour told us about the two prison breaks and even took us to the cells where the action took place. In one of the breaks, there were mortars dropped on prison hall and you can still see the divots in the floor. In the other break, the men created fake heads and used the handle of spoons to chisel tunnels from their cells into the utilities section of the hall where all the pipes and electrical wires run. they launched a search party, but never found them, though Alcatraz boasts no successful escapes. We were told these three guys were believed to have drowned in the water trying to get back to San Fran. the water is really cold and it has lots of hard currents.

5. We ate SF breadbowls with yummy tomato soup for lunch at Boudins bakery on the warf. We rode the cable car back to our hotel and missed the 4th of July fireworks because I wasn't feeling very well. There were probably 300,000+ people on the warf that day and I'm not all that sorry that we didn't stick around. I can imagine it was a pain to get back after the fireworks were over. We ended up napping and then going over to a Japanese restaurant for sushi and teriyaki beef. We heard the fireworks, but even though our room was on the 28th floor, the fog had rolled in and obscured our view completely. We went to bed instead.

6. One other side note on this first day. I started spotting on Thursday night, but it seemed to go away throughout the day. Needless to say, I was very worried, but we still had a good time anyway. The spotting went away completely by Saturday. I also went the doctor on Tuesday after I got back and had the baby checked. Everything is fine.

7. On Saturday, we went down to the warf again and spent most of the day there. Aaron got his street side crab cake and calamari lunch and I snacked on SF sourdough pizza. We walked to Ghirardelli square and out on to the public pier. We watched people fish and pull in crab pots. If we had more time, we probably would have done that ourselves. We also walked to Lombard street, which was quite a steep hike. We were going to take the cable car, but it was packed, so we decided to walk instead. Lomard street is pretty cool. I'll include some pictures of that too. That night we went to the Giants / Dodgers baseball game. The stadium there is one of the prettiest I've seen. The garlic fries are to die for and the fans were crazy. I was surprised at how many Dodgers fans there were and they all traded barbs back and forth. Aaron even got into it a few times. It was all around a fun night.

8. On Sunday we took the bus to Haight / Ashbury and walked around. It was pretty early and most of the shops weren't open, but we still got a feel for the area and saw some pretty funky places. We went into a skate shop and bought Shelby some stickers for her new skateboard. We also stopped into Amoeba Records which has the widest variety of CDs that I've ever seen. Lots of marijuana references in the store names and lots of hookah bars and stores that sell hookah equipment. One of the coolest things I saw was on most of the wood telephone poles there were thousands and thousands of staples where people have posted concert announcements. I took a picture and will include it in this post.

9. We went back to the hotel and took the cable car down to Little Italy, which is kind of by Lombard street and ate at a wonderful Italian restaurant. We sat in the sidewalk tables and watched the people play at Washington Square park and watched people going to church at St. Paul - Peter church. I'm not sure if it was the atmosphere or the food, but everything tasted fantastic.

More pictures below!