san francisco!

dave and i snuck away a day early from dillon beach and headed to san francisco. i love this city and was excited for dave to visit for the first time. the #1 thing dave wanted to see was alcatraz and apparently it was also the #1 thing all tourists in SF wanted to see. we realized this when we went to buy tickets and they were sold out for the next 7 days! yikes! i knew it was popular but i had no idea you had to plan that far in advance (i’m more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants girl). so note to others: purchase your tickets online in advance. we were definitely bummed and i felt awful for dropping the ball. we began to wander around the city and hit up all the major sites:

pier 39

we found a shop on pier 39 to try on fun hats...something we like to do wherever we go

fisherman's wharf

ghirardelli’s square - i loved learning about the process of making one of my favorite things...chocolate!



even though it was chilly we couldn't pass up the chance for some delicious ice cream.

during our walking tour of the city dave had to stop and use the restroom and so i began to talk to a guy working in a tour booth on the street (i have been known to talk to strangers wherever i go). we ended up getting to see alcatraz and scored a great deal. here was how it went: the next morning we listened to a 90 minute time share presentation. they are pretty dang convincing but we held strong…mainly because we would prefer to own an everyday home *before* we purchase a vacation home and all of that takes money...more than we have at the moment. after we listened to the pitch we got our 2 tickets to alcatraz (retail value $52), all day parking (retail value $32) and 2 tickets for a double-decker hop-on hop-off city bus tour (retail value $54). we felt pretty good about paying only $40 for all of it!
so it all worked out!

some of the city sights we saw on our bus tour including coit tower, a street car, the capitol, the trans america building and lombard street. we actually walked many blocks up a *really steep* street to get a closer look at lombard street. my legs were screaming at me and i was thinking about what great legs i would have if did the walk everyday. we got to the top and wished we had driven up so we could drive down the most crooked street in the world. but instead our quads got a workout going down.

we hopped off in china town and went to the oldest chinese bakery in SF. i remember getting some really good pork buns from a chinese bakery on my mission and so we bought some for lunch. either this bakery wasn't as good or my memory of the buns on my mission was a bit skewed because they were not that good. luckily they were only 90 cents each.

my china man...too cute

we were so excited for alcatraz and it did not disappoint us. it is such a facinating place. definitely worth 90 minutes at the time share for the tickets.

we had to hit up in 'n out before we left. soooo good (it definitely made up for the pork bun)