San Francisco Fun

Two week ago, me and four of my friends hopped on a plane and headed to beautiful San Francisco. We have been friends since high school and finally planned a girls trip. It was about time! 

Three of us landed on Thursday night, took the BART and checked into our hotel at The Hilton on Union Square. We kept laughing because people could tell right away that we were new to the city. The other two girls got in that night around 2:30. Poor girls only got about 3 hours of sleep because we were up early the next morning to take on the city!

We started with taking the bus to Pier 39. There, we watched the seals and grabbed some Boudin's for breakfast. I had a cinnamon roll made like a croissant. Heaven.

Seal watching on Friday morning.

Croissant cinnamon roll = heaven.

Walking around Pier 39 before our Alcatraz tour.

Next, we walked down to Pier 33 where we boarded our ferry for Alcatraz. It was so interesting. I didn't realize that it started as a military base. They had cannons lined up on the island that were ready to protect the city in case anything happened. We did the self-guided audio tour and made our way through most of it.

After we made it back to the city, we walked back to Pier 39 and had lunch at Chowder's. San Fran is famous for their clam chowder sourdough bread bowls. Unfortunately, I am not a seafood fan so a few of the girls tried that while I had chicken tenders. Lame, I know. After filling our bellies, we grabbed some coffee and headed down to Ghirardelli Square. That is my kind of place! I LOVE the caramel squares. So good. We grabbed some chocolate and decided to walk up to Lombard Street. After all, it was only a few blocks... that were straight uphill. Worst decision of the trip! We were definitely feeling it in our quads. May have shed some sweat too. But we finally made it. And it was a beautiful sight! I guess I never realized how hilly San Fran is. 

See how steep this is? We started at the bottom and walked uphill several blocks to Lombard Street.

The windiest street in the world!

Once we saw Lombard Street, our feet were killing us and so Uber became our transportation for the rest of the evening. They picked us up and took us to The Painted Ladies. There is a park right across the street from these called Alamo Square Park. This was probably one of my favorite memories from the trip because we were able to rest and goof around. I feel like we were just feeding off of each other's laughter the whole trip. After a ton of pictures, we headed to the Golden Gate Bridge. We just hopped out of the car for a few minutes. Enough to get a couple of pictures. Then on we went to the town of Sausalito. Sausalito is a charming town on the other side of the golden gate bridge. We walked around for a little while and then found a restaurant with a patio on the water to have a drink. It was beautiful because you could see the entire town of San Francisco just across the water. After we finished our drink, we headed back to San Fran's Fisherman's Wharf for dinner at Cioppino's. We indulged ourselves in great pasta and delicious sangria! After dinner, we took our first cable car back to the hotel. It was a long, but fun, day!

The ladies hanging out in front of the Painted Ladies.

The sweet little town of Sausalito! The bay is directly to the right of this picture.

Our first cable car ride!

Saturday was our wine day. We tried out a local breakfast place right around the corner from the Hilton called Taylor Street Cafe. It was great! After we ate, we headed back to the hotel to wait on our driver. We opted for the tour of Sonoma/Napa Valley so that we wouldn't have to worry about driving. We went to Sonoma first where we visited Jacuzzi's and Larson Family Winery for tastings. It was beautiful there! Then we had lunch in Sonoma and headed to Napa for a champagne tour and tasting at Domaine Chandon. It was fun to learn about the difference between the making of wine and sparkling wine. I would love to take Jeremy back to the wine country. The wineries were beautiful and there were quite a few bed and breakfast's out in this area. It would be a fun little getaway!

After we made it back to San Francisco, we tried out Buena Vista Cafe for dinner. Everyone told us that we had to try the Irish Coffee, so we did. Definitely NOT my thing. I cringed at my first sip. Yuck! Luckily, it was right next to Ghirardelli Square so we hopped over there for some dessert afterwards and then took the trolley back to the hotel. We had to wake up at 4 AM the next morning so we spent the rest of the night packing and trying to get to bed early.

This was the Irish Coffee...gross!

It was an amazing trip and I got to knock a destination off of my bucket list. I'm blessed for the wonderful time I got to spend with my sweet friends!