Jon had never been to California before and I hadn't seen my cousins in a while so we decided to take a road trip down to San Francisco.
We took the scenic route on the way there and stopped in the redwoods. We stayed the night in Crescent City and saw a lighthouse, the Trees of Mystery and drove through a tree!
We stopped at a few other attractions, like a cute little house that was made out of a hollowed out tree.
The next day we headed out to San Francisco to my cousin's place. We had such a good time visiting with them and taking the kids to school and feeding the baby. Between my 3 cousins they had 5 kids so we had a lot of fun with them.
Of course it wouldn't be a Tombleson trip if we didn't do a TON of sight seeing and have adventures!
The first day we headed out to Golden Gate Park and went to the Conservatory and saw a bunch of beautiful flowers and plants. Luckily for us it was the 1st Tuesday of the month and was free to go in.
We then headed down to the Japanese Tea Garden, walked around and had some tea. From there we headed down towards the beach, saw an old windmill, saw the beach and headed over to lands end for some beautiful views.
We headed back to my cousins to meet up with them to head down to Pier 39 for some clam chowder and sightseeing. Had some really delicious chowder in a bread bowl and we all rode the Merry-Go-Round. The finish off our exhausting night we went over to this really cool old timey arcade that had the most amazing puppets dancing and doing other things for only $.25.
The next day Jon and I ventured downtown alone and what's a trip to San Francisco without riding a cable car! We wanted to go have breakfast near the Coit Tower and figured the cable car would get us close.
We heard Mama's had the best breakfast around but when we got there of course there was a HUGE line so we decided on Cafe Divine down the street that probably had the BEST breakfast i've ever had. It was near this beautiful Italian church.
From there we headed up to the Coit Tower. What a climb! Luckily once we were up there we got to take an elevator to the top. What beautiful views of the city!
Heading back down we went to the San Francisco Dungeon. It was SO awesome and scary! Well at least I thought it was scary. Jon didn't. It was a neat interactive play through San Francisco history. We also hit up Ripley's Believe it or Not which is always lots of fun.
Day 3 was time for Alcatraz!!! After having breakfast on Mission St. We got on a bus towards downtown, then the F train for Pier 33. We took a ferry over to Alcatraz where we got to explore the island. We weren't too impressed with the outside as it was pretty much just looked like broken buildings that weren't there anymore. Inside the prison was amazing though! We stepped in to the shower area where all the inmates entered. We got our self guided audio tour and headed inside. It was so crazy being inside the prison.
From there we headed to Fisherman's Warf area to have lunch at Alioto's again. Their fish stew is so amazing! We were so tired and did not want to wait for the train or walk so we took one of those bike cab things. It was my first time on one. He was fast!
That night my cousin Bety and her husband Oscar took us out to dinner at a really good Guatemalan restaurant. The food was so good!
Our last day there we just wanted to do a little exploring and take it easy. But of course we ended up doing a lot that day as well and only missed ONE thing on our list of things to do (go to Lombard St). We got off the T train downtown and decided to walk around there a bit. We saw the Apple Store, Barney's and were amazed to see that their Marshall's carried $150 and $250 purses (discounted from like $500!). From there we hoped on the F train over to the last stop to walk over to Ghirardelli Square. We found a cute little shop there that had a lot of souvenirs and way cheaper than Pier 39! We went to Ghirardelli and had some over priced sundaes and buy some over priced chocolate.
From there we headed down to City Light Books. It was pretty cool being there and Jon got an Allen Ginsberg book. We had lunch at the Stinking Rose where we had a lot of garlic and some garlic infused wine.
Stuffed and wanted to head back down to Lombard St., we instead decided to keep walking up and go through China Town. It was so cool there! Beautiful buildings and lots of neat stuff I wanted to buy, although I don't think I bought anything there. We headed down until we found the gates. Again we thought about going back down to Lombard St. but we were so exhausted we decided instead to head back. We were only a few blocks from Market Street where we would catch the train so we just walked the rest of the way.
We thought about driving out to Mission Street to have dinner that night but we were EXHAUSTED so we decided to just walk down to Las Isletas and have some of there AMAZING Nicaraguan and Honduran food.
The drive back was pretty uneventful. We stopped to eat and get gas a few times but made it back to town in about 11 and a half hours. We came home to a delicious meal cooked by my mom (with lots of veggies as we didn't get much in San Fran!) then spent the next day recovering from all those hills and all that walking!
And a Tombleson blog would not be complete without a picture of Annabel! Here she is with her Escaped from Alcatraz shirt! HAHA
