San Francisco

As promised, here is an overview of our vacation to California.


Day 1

We arrived on a Friday night in Oakland. After making our way to the train station, we took the BART across the bay to downtown San Francisco. It was kind of a novel experience for Brian and the girls, as they had not really spent much time in a large city, nor used public transportation much. Their only other experience was several years ago in Chicago and we had Brian's sister there to help us. Anyway, we made it and only had to walk a few blocks to our hotel. We stayed at the Hilton in the Financial District, with a great deal that we got on Hotwire. It was actually at the edge of Chinatown, so it was convenient to that, but not very convenient to many restaurants. Anyway, we just went to bed so that we could get an early start the next day, which wasn't too difficult since we were still operating on Central time. We walked to the Union Square area and had breakfast at Sear's Fine Food, which is evidently a well-known place. It was good, but a bit pricey. Then we walked on down to Market Street and caught the cable car to take us to Fisherman's Wharf. That was a lot of fun. The cable cars are pretty much a tourist attraction--not many San Franciscans ride them regularly because they cost much more than other public transportation (buses and streetcars only cost $1.50, whereas the cable car is $5 per person!). But, it was a must-do experience. Brian even stood on the step and held onto the handrail.

Once at Fisherman's Wharf, we made our way to Pier 41, where we got our tickets for the ferry to Alcatraz. A note about that--if you want to do this, you must purchase your tickets in advance. I had done this, so it was no problem. The ferry is only about 15 minutes out to "The Rock"--go early if you have motion issues, as it is not as rough at that time.


We really enjoyed our tour, which was self-guided around most of the island, with an audio tour of the cell block. It was fascinating, and one of the highlights of our time in San Francisco. We spent several hours there. Once back from that, it was mid-afternoon and we were in need of lunch. We walked a ways to a place called Fog City Diner, which was recommended by my cousin. It was good food, but expensive. It also had no air conditioning, which is normally not an issue in SF, but we happened to be there during an extremely unusual heat wave. After lunch we headed back to Pier 39. We wandered around and the girls rode the double-decker carousel. Then we met up with my brother and his family, who had arrived that day from Texas. After an evening snack of sourdough bread (YUM!), we decided to head back to our hotel.

Day 2

We got up early again on Sunday morning. I thought it would be neat to go to church somewhere, but couldn't really figure out where to go. We could see a church from our hotel window, but didn't know exactly how to get there or what time services were. I found out later that it is actually the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi. It isn't really a church anymore, although apparently they do have mass everyday. So, after a breakfast of donuts, procured by Brian at a local pastry shop, we headed over to Chinatown. We wandered in and out of the little tourist souvenir shops. We picked up a few little trinkets while waiting to meet up with my brother. We also took some pictures by the Chinatown gate. After we finished our shopping, we decided to go over to Japan Center. My sister-in-law is Japanese, so we thought that might be interesting. We ended up having lunch there at a Japanese restaurant and it was really good. Then we decided to go back down to the Fisheman's Wharf area. The guys wanted to see Fort Mason and the girls wanted to play in the water--even though the water was quite chilly and they didn't have their swimsuits! We finished up the day by eating at In-N-Out Burgers and then headed back to our hotels.

Coming soon: More vacation news and pictures!