San Francisco | Day 2

Friday, June 16, 2017

I'm interrupting our normal Five on Friday to bring you the 2nd part of our San Francisco trip! This day, we woke up early and were 2nd in line for breakfast at Honey and Honey Cafe which was delicious! The restaurant definitely got full very quickly so I'm really glad we got over there early - they also had the best fresh-squeezed orange juice that they made right in front of you. After breakfast, we walked over to get our rental car downtown then loaded up our things and headed for the Painted Ladies. This area was so pretty and picturesque San Fran. We had lots of fun utilizing the tripod here lol






Once we were done with the ladies, we headed to the Golden Gate Bridge. We stopped and took pictures in Chrissy Field (that's the name of the sundae we always order at Ghirardelli's lol!) before driving over the bridge to take more pictures at basically every stop along the side of the road. We seriously couldn't have asked for a prettier day or clearer skies!














Thank goodness for the tripod!!



Once we were done with our pictures, we headed over to Sausalito for lunch. We decided on Napa Valley Burger Company which was ah-mazing! After lunch, we continued to walk around the little town, got some ice cream and took some pictures. It was an adorable little town and the perfect stopping place before heading to Napa :)





After Sausalito, we headed to Muir Woods to see the Sequoya's! Stephen was super excited about this part of the trip - we had a great time here and were so amazing with how big the trees were! It was the perfect hiking distance and there were a few trail options. When we first got into the park, there was a new baby fox den and one of them came out to play!!! It was literally the cutest thing ever! I wanted so bad to scoop him up and take him home with me... I told Stephen I could hide him in my sweatshirt on the flight back ;)












Before going to Napa, I did some research on Julia's blog to determine what spots we needed to hit. She highly recommended The Fremont Diner which was on our way to the hotel. It was the cutest little diner and had a delicious sounding menu! Since I'm trying to stay good on my nutrition plan, we split the pimento cheese appetizer and a salad. After dinner, we made it to our hotel and crashed.hard. We were passed out by 8pm and slept 10 hours. It was glorious and the perfect way to help me get on Pacific time. 




I hope everyone has a great weekend! Come back next week for my recap of Napa!





San Francisco | Day 1

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Phew, things have been quite busy recently! I'm currently in Nashville for another full conference week - I have a feeling I'll be crashing hard this weekend. But let's go back to last week - I had a week-long conference in Napa so we decided to go a few days early and make a mini-trip out of it! I've never been to California before and Stephen's never seen Northern CA so (thankfully) I was able to convince him to come with me so I wouldn't have to go back out there one day. I'm so glad he was able to come with me (and for cheap too!!) because even though we enjoyed our trip, we don't have any desire to go back out there again.


We flew in Saturday morning - it was super nice the time change worked in our favor! We stayed at Villa Florence which was the perfect location and it was a super cute, boutique hotel. They were actually renovating the lobby when we went so I'm sure it'll be even better once they get that done. The hotel was in the middle of downtown and had a trolley stop right in front as well which made for getting around easier. Since it's so expensive to park a car overnight in the city, we decided to ride the Bart (their subway system) into the city from the airport which worked out really well.



After an early check-in, we went to grab lunch at Sanraku where we stuffed our faces with delicious Japanese food. We rolled ourselves out of the restaurant and decided to get a 1 day pass for the Trolley so we could have the ultimate San Fran experience and have easy access to Lombard Street and Fisherman's Wharf. 



Our first stop was Lombard Street which was riddled with tourists like ourselves and had the most beautiful, lush landscaping. I couldn't get over all of the beautiful hydrangeas! It was quite a workout walking up and down the street but it was so worth it.









I was totally copying the cool kids' poses lol! There was also a ton of old asian ladies that kept getting in our pictures - the millennials were not amused ;)





I have to admit, I'm currently writing this from my hotel room so I don't have access to my pictures but I grabbed the wrong picture and not the best.picture.ever This lady is a scream!

After our time on Lombard Street, we hopped back on the Trolley and headed towards Ghirardelli Square. I really liked this area and thought it was super cute - also, the ice cream wasn't bad either ;) Thankfully for us, the Disney Springs location is the exact same :)



And... here's an awkward picture of me touching the Pacific Ocean for the first time. It needed to be documented lol


We then strolled down to Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39 for some fun sight-seeing. There were so many people around! We weren't too hungry from the Japanese and ice cream so we did a horrible fun thing and got a sourdough turtle from Boudin which is apparently the sourdough place. The turtle was delicious and kept us going for a few days lol Towards the end of the night, it was freezing and we were tired so we waited in line for the Trolley to head back home. We stopped in Walgreens to get some waters then turned in for the night.





I had to include this one because Stephen got a seagull in mid-flight! He's obsessed with this picture lol



It was so cool to see the Sea Lions in the wild!!

That's Alcatraz in the background!






Let's hope I make it back this week for Day 2!! Linking up with Jessi