Tuesday, October 20, 2015

San Francisco Tourists

Ryan and I were in San Francisco last weekend. If you follow me on social media {@CarleeMcDot on Instagram and Twitter}, then I'm sure you are well aware of this fact. We went for the Nike Women's Half Marathon, but while we were there we wanted to make sure we enjoyed the city and everything it had to offer. Literally, I think we walked about 40 miles over the three days we were there (not counting the 13.1 miles I ran), so I think we just about saw it all (especially since San Francisco is less than 47 square miles).

I am planning on doing a separate recap of the race events, but I wanted to do a bit of a photo dump of everything else we did while we were there. I'm not sure if you are aware of it, but SF is an expensive city! I think our trip cost close to $1,500 for 3 days (and, if you know me, you know we tried to do it as frugally as possible and it was STILL that much), so we wanted to make sure we made the trip worth it.

We flew out of San Diego on Friday morning (to get the most out of the weekend, we took the EARLY morning flight, which would give us all day Friday in the city, but also meant a 3am wake-up call...).

I am not a coffee or tea drinker, but I will rock a "white hot
chocolate" (aka warm milk). Thankfully I had a gift card or
I would have NEVER spent $4 on it...

Didn't Taylor Swift say Starbucks will write your name on your cup? Well, they
will write SOMEONE'S name on it... 

The flight from San Diego to San Francisco was uneventful. I think it takes all of 75-90 minutes. Pretty easy peasy! We got in to SF around 9am and figured we would head to our hotel to see if there was any possibility of checking in early (even if we couldn't, we figured they would at least hold our bags until we could so we didn't have to carry them around while we did some sightseeing). Thankfully they had a room so we were able to drop our gear with no problem.

The hotel we stayed at was very nice, but had tiny rooms

Thankfully we weren't planning on spending much time in the room

I guess that's what you get when you try to stick a ton of people in a small city...

A couple of our friends from college live in the city so we were able to meet up with one of them for lunch on Friday and then grabbed dinner with two more Saturday night. It was great getting to see our Michigan peeps!

I normally would never choose Vietnamese food as my first choice, but
it was absolutely DELISH! I had the Lemongrass Tofu and it was AMAZING!

Ryan had the Tofu Pho and it was SCRUM-DIDLY-UMPTIOUS as well
(although I didn't care for the tofu in this one... a little too soggy for me)

I did notice that I seemed to stick out like a sore thumb amongst the San Franciscans... Most everyone there wears black (or dull, dark colors) and it seemed like everyone smoked. My bright colors were definitely given a few funny looks over the weekend, but they make me happy so I don't care!

Like I mentioned, we walked just about every where we went. We did take the BART from the airport to the hotel and then a few short trips (if it would save us more than 10 minutes or so), but for the most part our legs were our transportation.

If you can't tell, I LOVE public transportation!

Waiting for one of the trains

There was even a Wolverine colored street car!

Ryan has been to San Fran quite often (most recently was a couple months ago for a photo shoot he directed), but I have only been once before. We figured we would play tourists and see some of the "must see" sights around town that we hadn't seen on previous trips. We decided to hike over to see Lombard Street (which folks "say" is the crookedest street, but apparently it is not).



We also walked to the Fishermans Wharf. While there, we made sure to stop by the Musée Mécanique to play some of the old school games. I ended up beating Ryan in a bike race, but he beat me in overtime at bubble hockey.


Creepy, right?! I don't even remember what it did
if you put in $.25, but we did NOT pay to see...

Whac-a-mole!

What can I say?! I am a fast biker...

You can see Alcatraz from the pier. We did the tour last time we were there, so
didn't go out there this time, but I liked the sign.

You can see Alcatraz in the distance

Another "must" was seeing the Painted Ladies. These are the colorful houses near Alamo Park that are most famous for being on Full House. Andrea (aka Kimmy Gibbler) did apologize to me for not being home when we stopped by... She said she was next door helping DJ with a crisis (she needed a life lesson and a hug ;)).

Every where you look... 

We didn't realize it, but on Sunday when we were walking around, the city was having a big ol' street fair - Sunday Streets. Hubby and I love pursuing local goodies, so walked up and down the street a bit to check everything out (and, obviously, do a bit of people watching). We were even able to pick up a few awesome patches at one of the nearby shops.

Ryan liked the CAMP OUT one and I grabbed the CAMPING CLUB patch

Although I didn't get any ice cream to eat, I can at least
act like I was an ice cream cone, right?!

I guess the reason everyone wears so much black is so that they don't clash with all of the amazing street art. I LOVE seeing all of the terrific work all over town. I would make Ry walk down random alleys just to find more awesome art.








And I can't forget to tell you this story! So we were walking through Chinatown on Friday and I saw a penny press machine. There was a penny that you could get with a waving cat (you know, those lucky ones?). Ryan has always wanted one of the figures (and has even talked about getting a tattoo of one), so I HAD to have one. Well, as luck would have it, I only had one quarter and two pennies and you needed two quarters and one penny. I joked with Ryan about asking some folks if they had any change, but figured no one would give me any. About an hour later, JESUS SENT ME MONEY! He actually gave me $15 when I only needed a quarter! How amazing is that?! So on the way back we stopped by that little Chinatown market and I got my souvenir penny! (I also got a Rosie the Riveter penny at Musée Mécanique, which you will see the significance of it in a few days.)



I will be heading back to San Francisco in January on a girls trip (instead of buying each other gifts, we decided we would take a weekend trip together and San Fran was where we decided). The only thing I didn't get to really cross off my list this time was going to the Golden Gate Bridge (although we did see it while running the race), so I will make sure we make it there in a couple months.

Is there anything I missed seeing or doing while in San Francisco?

5 comments:

Sara Elizabeth said...

San Francisco is absolutely one of my favorite cities your trip looked like so much fun {except the small hotel room thing - I am so claustrophobic that would have set me over the edge!}

Unknown said...

San Fransisco is on my travel list for sure. That street art looks fantastic! Plus seeing the Full House house!

Leah Jones said...

That street art is AMAZING!

Danielle said...

I went to San Francisco years ago, I'd love to go again though, what a great city!

Unknown said...

I've been following you on IG for a minute. This was my second time running this race, first was in 2013 when they had the last year for the full and the old course. This year I was extremely disappointed in all the same things you pointed out. In 2013 the course was FULL of support. The expo was one of the best I had ever been to and took 2 days to experience/see everything. I've been told this will be the last year for the race, and if it is not I'm sure many others have told their part on how this weekend went down.

Very well said. Up side, when your necklace tarnishes, take it to tiffany and co and they'll get it back into beautiful shape for you!!

You looked awesome out there!