California....San Francisco

We just got back from our trip to San Francisco. I was really excited about this trip, because I've never been to California before and have always wanted to go. Kevin had some meetings in the city over the weekend, and the girls and I decided to tag along. We drove down and planned some extra sight-seeing adventures on the way.

The first was supposed to be a detour through Oregon's Crater Lake National Park. We've been wanting to see it since moving here a year ago, but haven't had the opportunity to drive that far south. So we thought this was the perfect opportunity. And it would have been, if it hadn't been pouring down rain and quite possibly snowing quite a bit in the park itself. So at the turnoff to head east toward the park, we made the decision to continue driving south.

This put us in San Francisco a day earlier than we planned. We swung by Sacramento thinking we might stay there instead of driving on into San Francisco. We didn't really know what to do or see in Sacramento and found a park to walk around. That's where we saw this guy....

His name was Sweet Pea and he was taking a walk in the park with his owner. She was really nice and friendly and answered lots of questions for the girls.

So we continued on to San Francisco. A week before our trip, we watched a travel episode on the city...an attempt to get excited about our trip. I think it actually made us wary of going to "the most liberal city in America". I'm not a huge fan of cities to begin with, and I seriously felt a heaviness the entire time we were there. It is a weird city and evil abounds. The girls and I spent many hours inside the hotel room while Kevin was in meetings.

Because we arrived a day early, we had all of Friday morning to explore the city as a family. We took a cable car from our hotel (in the heart of down town San Francisco) to Fisherman's Wharf.

This is looking up Lombard street - the "crookedest" street. We didn't go to the top of the hill, but it starts a series of switchbacks making it crooked.

It was pretty cloudy, but the rain held off and we were able to walk around the piers.

Pier 39 is the most famous of the piers at Fisherman's Wharf. We watched the sea lions for a while. It was fun to watch them jump on and off these floating piers.






We were there before the shops opened so we got a crepe and waited for the shops to open. Then we strolled through some of them. We were both shocked at how expensive everything was. I wanted to buy a can of diet coke and it was $2.50!!!
We walked down to Ghiradelli Square, but didn't eat any chocolate.

We also had pretty good views of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge

When we left of Sunday, it was much clearer and a bit sunnier.