San Francisco Part 1

I absolutely loved San Francisco! I knew from the start that this would be an amazing trip since I would be reunited with P after 3.5 long weeks apart. What made the trip even better is it went from a 2.5 day vacation to 4 full days thanks to a delay on my flight out that led to us extending the trip and then flight cancellations due to winter weather in DC. Here's a recap of the first two days of our amazing vacation/reunion!

Thursday
I arrived at the hotel around 6pm (about 5 hours later than planned). I have never been so happy to see my husband but boy did he look exhausted! We went to dinner at a Spanish restaurant two blocks from the hotel and then had one more drink at the hotel bar.

This was about 20 minutes before he passed out.

Within 10 minutes of going back upstairs my poor, exhausted husband passed out (remote in hand of course). He slept for 12+ hours and he needed it!

Friday
I was up super early on Friday due to the time difference and excitement. I did some reading, went to the drugstore to replenish hubby's toiletries and picked up Starbucks. Once he was up and ready we headed out for the day with umbrellas in hand. While it was a little chillier than we were hoping, it was still 30 degrees warmer than the east coast so I couldn't complain. We had a very rainy walk through Chinatown on our way to Fishermen's Wharf.

We had a delicious lunch of cioppino (tomato-based seafood stew) and a couple of drinks hoping the rain would pass. It eventually did and we continued to explore Fishermen's Wharf and then made our way to Ghiradelli Square. We split (but we all know who ate the most) a Salted Caramel Sundae and picked up some goodies from the store.

After a little more exploring we took the trolley car back to the area where our hotel was.

On the trolley!

Because it was a little chillier than I thought we stopped in one of the many stores at Union Square so I could pick up something warmer to wear. Other than New York City, I have never seen a shopping scene quite like this downtown in a major city. Afterward we stopped for drinks at a great bar called Urban where P was able to have local craft beers and I had two delicious Moscow Mules. After getting our rental car set up for a future day trip we headed back to the hotel for naps. P took a very long nap (I don't think he realized just how tired he was) so we had a late dinner at the hotel bar and called it a night.

Saturday
I had been looking forward to this day since I booked the tour a few weeks prior. A tour bus picked us up from our hotel to take us to Muir Woods and Sausalito. It was a beautiful, sunny morning and perfect for lots of outdoor time. The tour bus stopped at scenic look-out on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge for some photo ops.

Then we drove on to Muir Woods and had about 1.5 hours for walking and exploring. P and I took a nice long walk through woods. This was probably one of my favorite memories of the trip. It was just amazing to walk through the redwoods and have good, quality chats with my husband. I was a happy lady.

We then went on to Sausalito where we planned to eat lunch. We found a spot called Scoma's right on the water where I enjoyed clam chowder in a sourdough bowl and P had fish tacos - both were delicious!

View of Sausalito from the ferry. We ate at the restaurant in the blue building.

The tour company had circled the wrong ferry times back to San Francisco so as soon as we realized the error we had to toss cash on the table and run to catch one of the last ferrys. Once we got back to San Francisco we took a cab up to the Painted Ladies and took the obligatory pictures in front of everyone's favorite Full House scene.

Whatever happened to predictability?

As we were walking through Haights Ashbury we got notifications that our Monday flights were cancelled. So we headed back to the hotel bar for drinks and to reschedule our flights for Tuesday. More naps followed before a delicious dinner at Sotto's in North Beach. We shared cioppino again and agreed that we would have to find a recipe to recreate it on our own!

Waiting for our table (the lobster was our pager)

Delicious!

Stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow!