Adventures in San Francisco

Sometime during the summer, Sean and I thought that our autumn looked pretty open. So we decided to take a trip to San Francisco. I'd never been before and Sean and I really wanted to fly on Virgin Air and we could do that relatively cheaply by going from Seattle to San Francisco. Since then, our Autumn has been anything but free. Work has booked me to Arizona and Texas so I'll be traveling for 6 weekends in a row; I am little over half way through that now.

Anyway, Virgin Air has pretty cool planes. There are no fluorescent overhead lights, instead it is this pink and purple mood lighting that makes the whole place look like a dance club. The seats are all black leather and everyone has an individual touch screen. It was pretty swanky. You even place your drink and snack orders through your touch screen. We were well entertained. We arrived a bit late due to a weather delay (San Francisco fog), but we were still able to go SWIMMING! I was so excited. I've wanted to swim all summer long. It was great to get in the water and splash around.

The next morning we headed into the city and rode a TROLLEY! They call them streetcars but I am going to ignore that because I enjoyed singing/listening to the Trolley Song from meet me in St. Lois while we rode through the city. Hanging off the side is definitely the best way to go. We walked a couple blocks from the last stop and checked into our second hotel. About that time it started to rain and proceeded to rain for the next two days straight. That didn’t slow us down too much. Our first historic stop was Ghirardelli Square. We shared a super yummy Ice Cream Sunday with Fudge and bought a cute tin (that looks good in our chocolate themed kitchen) filled with Chocolate. They also give out free samples. Yum!

We passed this funny store... only in California.

We headed over to Lombard Street; it is the curviest road in the country. It’s beautifully landscaped but I don’t know that I would want to drive it.

We also hit China town and looked at all of the kitschy shop windows. Enjoyed the street decorations and visited a fortune cookie factory. Sean and I felt like we were in China again, so we didn’t exactly stick around forever. This shot is by B &W with color accent of red. I think my ones from actual China turned out better.

Then it was off to wait for a trolley, to then wait FOREVER for an electric bus. Dear San Francisco, your public transportation system timing STINKS. We waited for over 30 minutes in the pouring rain. Watching multiple people give up and start walking. The stop was packed with people. Finally Sean and I were shaking from the cold and determined that we’d better just walk back to our hotel and dinner reservation because we were loosing too much body heat. We were soaked through pretty much, but still had an amazing dinner at this sourdough bread factory. I had clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl. It was delicious. We had a gorgeous view overlooking the wharf area and Alcatraz. Oh that’s right we, went ahead and forfeited our Alcatraz trip because we had already had more than enough outside in the rain time. When we got back to the hotel I dried my jeans and tennis shoes in the dryer. We were so wet.

The next morning we went to sacrament meeting pretty close to our hotel and then we set out to enjoy a day at the Exploratorium. We got a little soaked getting there but they had hand dryers in the bathroom so hooray for them and hooray for drying your clothes with a hand dryer.

They had lots of cool exhibits but I am going to make Sean, our family science expert elaborate on that.

This picture is Sean and I in the video display they have as you walk in the museum. Sean is in a blue shirt and khakis I’m in a brown sweater and jeans.

We also took pictures with the color exhibit. I'm on the right, Sean is taller on the left.

This is my best impression of finger puppets. I was never super good at them.

We rode the trolley back to the train station to get to the airport. It was finally decent out, so we took a few pictures.