A weekend in San Francisco

So, I have lots of pictures for you here. This weekend Derek and I went to San Fancisc. It was my birthday present from him this year. We sent the kids up to my parents' house and they split up their time with Alisha and Jack so that everyone got to play. Addie kept everyone very busy as she does and Ethan played hard. It sounds like everyone had a great time but were very happy that they got to give the kids back. My kids are cute and funny but have so much energy.

San Francisco was awesome. Derek and I both took a couple of days off of work to go. So, we headed down on Thursday in the late afternoon. The plan was to stay at my cousin's house since she lives just outside of the city. So she picked us up from the airport and we got to immediately find out that California driving takes place all throughout the state, not just down towards LA. Crazy drivers. Derek loved it and I got carsick. Go figure. Unfortunately, the next morning Kaleah had to work so Derek and I were off to find out about public transportation. We took the commuter train called the BART into the city and then were going to take a street car to the waterfront. It would have worked out if we were paying any attention to the map, but we weren't so we headed off onto a streetcar in the wrong direction. It was fine thoug, we had no place to be and no real plan, so we just switched buses after a quick stop at Starbucks.

Once we finally were headed the right direction we headed towards the Fisherman's Wharf and checked out Pier 39 where we spent way too much money, walked a lot and ate some lunch at Bubba Gumps. It is a silly little restaurant that is themed, you guessed it, like Forrest Gump. We at some shrimp and the were on our way to ride a double decker tour bus. Kaleah had some reusable tickets for the bus so we got to do a little bit of touring. Our tourist was fairly new so she wasn't very funny but it was nice riding around above the busyness of the city until we reached Chinatown. I loved Chinatown and again spent way too much money, but bought some extremely cool stuff. Then Kaleah met up with us and we ate dinner athe worst Chinese place ever. Derek decided we should eat at a $5.99 all you can eat dimsum and bbq place. I would not ever reccommend it. Although the food was gross we definately got our $20 worth out of it with all the jokes we made out of it. It was actually quite amusing. After we paid they gave us styrofoam plates to serve ourselves on (styrofoam is illegal in the city). Then we saw some signs that said there was a wastage fee if you didn't eat all your food. So after Kaleah and I both spit out food into our napkins Derek snuck our food into the garbage can and we left.

After Chinatown we headed back to the Wharf to walk around a little more get anything else to eat and start heading back to Kaleah's. We just took our time and had fun simply walking around. We stopped in the center of the town Kaleah lives in and celebrated Oktoberfest a little bit and then headed back. The next morning we headed out to Haight Street. If you don't know, that is where all the hippies hung out in the 60's. So, that is still the hippie town. We saw all sorts of different types of people there. It was definately a great place to people watch. We bought some great tie-dye there. It was fun. Then Kaleah gave us a driving tour of SF. We went to the Presidio, up Hyde street (a very very steep street, not sure how any car can make it up there), down Lombard Street (a very crooked street) went down to Baker Beach, stopped and took lots of pictures and the headed to North Beach. North Beach is also known as Little Italy, I'm guessing just for the tourists though. The street lamps have Italian flag colors painted on them but the locals just call it North Beach. We got some great Italian food and Derek got to practice a little of his Italian. We ate outside on the sidewalk and it was wonderful. It got us a little homesick for Italy. We really miss that place.

After all that we just headed back home and played Trivial Pursuit. It was a very short trip but it was perfect. No stress, no big plans. Just chill. Plus we didn't do anything that made us wish we had brought the kids, which is so rarely the case. Most everytime we go anywhere without the kids we do something that the kids would love.

So here are a ton of pictures from the trip and of the kids from the weekend. Enjoy!!

I took this picture on the double decker bus. Read it if you can. It is pretty funny.

The Bay BridgeSome cool picturesA Cable CarThis was a street guy's bike. You can't see it very well, but there is a bike in the front connected to some sort of bike cart and then connected to another bike in the back. It was at least 12 feet long. One of the many strange things we saw in SF.

Chinatown gates. SF has the largest Chinatown in the US, or so I heard.Here is one of the many street cars in San Francisco. They have both street cars and cable cars. They adopt many from all over the world and keep them the same color and style as when they receive them so they are all different shapes and colors. You can't really see what I was trying to take a picture of here, but the sign on the front says "To nowhere in particular." I thought it was funny.Alcatraz Island

Lots of pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge. I'm not exactly sure what is so special about the bridge but it is sure cool looking.
The top of Lombard streetThe bottom of Lombard Street, the curviest road in San Francisco. It would be way too steep to drive down without the curves.View of Alcatraz from the cityAn awesome view from the city. Alcatraz in the background.
Here's the street we had to drive up to get the awesome view.Kaleah turning around at the top of the street with a good viewAddie Loves to color
Auntie is braver than me and will take the kids to Chuck E CheeseAddie getting a bathGood morning EthanGrandma put curlers in Addie's hairPlaying at the park with Uncle Jack and Niki Daddy and Addie all worn out at the end of the weekend