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iphone, vacation

San Francisco iphone shots

The last of our San Francisco pictures! Yay! Then I can go back to blogging about our crazy life. By the way–these pictures are not in chronological order!

Have I mentioned how much I love the houses there? 😉 Seriously. I stopped so many times to take pictures of houses every time we walked or drove anywhere. But I won’t bore you with all of them…just a few of my favorites.

1) Don entered into the “man bag” world for this trip and it was great having someone else to lug around camera stuff part time! He loves that I call it his purse 😉 2) The Full House house!! 3) and 4) Those famous painted ladies!!

full house house and painted ladies san fran

1) and 2) I mentioned in my last post about an amazing bakery that we went to. It’s called Mr. Holmes Bakehouse. They serve cruffins (croissant + muffin) every day in a limited quantity. We got there wayyyy too early. They roll out at 9am and we expected a line to form pretty early based on what I had heard. We got there around 7:30, grabbed a life changing chocolate croissant and a donut and just hung out until we started the line around 8:40. I would suggest getting there around 8:45 and not super early (at least for a weekday.) The flavor that day was supposed to be brownie walnut but for some reason they were serving key lime pie. I’m definitely not a lime fan but the cruffin itself was amazing and I would DEFINITELY put it on my list of recommendations. And while you’re there, get some chocolate croissants!

3) We also tried Bi-rite Creamery which was supposedly a big deal there. To me, it was nothing special but I do love salted caramel and chocolate ice cream together. 4) Ghirardelli was connected to our hotel so we grabbed these amazing chocolate dipped waffle cones with Ghirardelli chocolate ice cream. Now THAT was good ice cream.

I had to make this collage of the back of my head because it totally cracks me up. 1) Painted Ladies 2) Muir Woods 3) Golden Gate Bridge 4) Twin Peaks

FOOD! 3 of the 4 burger places we had while we were there. 1) Super Duper Burger–it was pretty good but nothing too amazing. 2) hotel breakfast 3) In-n-Out 4) Causwells (not our favorite!)

1) generic flight shot. 2) pretty blooms and color combo! 3) flamingo graffiti 4) love seeing palm trees!!

1) 15 weeks belly shot in front of a pretty house that I matched. 2) and one at Muir Woods. 3) Self timer at Muir Woods. Nailed it! 4) Lombard Street

Now the back of Don’s head get its turn in the spotlight at Muir Woods and Twin Peaks. The other shots are the pretty views from Alcatraz.

And that’s a wrap! Now we can get back to normal life.

If you’re interested in the other posts here’s Part One, Part Two, and Part Three!

April 29, 2016

Blog, vacation

San Francisco (Part Three)

So it probably isn’t wise to start out my post saying how lame I got about taking pictures with the DSLR on our last two days in San Francisco. Really draws in the reader, eh?

One of the big things I wanted to do while we were in San Francisco was to visit Alcatraz. For some reason, I have been really intrigued about the island’s history. I think part of it had something to do with Jorge Garcia’s short lived series called Alcatraz. But I’ve read up on the island and the attempted escapes and have wanted to visit ever since.

We scheduled our trip there for the morning, allowing a ton of time to find parking, and we were able to make it on an earlier cruise…which I’m very thankful for because it gets pretty crowded as the day goes on (though they sell a limited amount of tickets for each time slot.)

I don’t think you can do anything in San Francisco without walking a ton, and Alcatraz is no exception. After dragging your body up the huge hill to the prison, you are given an audio device and headphones to begin the tour. It walks you through the prison and gives history on the different parts. It was pretty neat to be walking through this empty prison, full of so much history, especially after seeing a lot of it on TV. I didn’t take a single picture inside with the DSLR. Not because you aren’t allowed to, but because I just thought pictures would get pretty old and repetitive. Just thank me now haha.

But I did snap this one of San Francisco from the island. Can you imagine feeling so close to freedom, but unable to do anything about it?

Oh, and just in case you’re wondering–it IS possible to swim from the island to the mainland, under the right conditions. They hold a triathlon there every year and said a 7 year old has even made the swim! There’s no way I’d throw Liam in that water and let him swim, no matter how long he trained.

and a little reverse view of the island from the mainland

After we got back from the island, we walked over to In-n-Out for lunch. I had been there before but Don hadn’t. And my opinion remains the same–just another fast food burger. BUT it was better than our hipster burgers from the day before so it’s all good. I looked up Lombard Street–you know, famously known as “the crookedest street in the world” and saw it was about a mile walk. (Which feels like 10 miles when your legs and feet are on fire from all the walking!) So we walked instead of driving and attempting to find parking!

I feel like it’s so hard to tell where the street is in these pictures because of all the greenery but you can kind of see the tops of cars zig-zagging through the middle.

There are stairs on either side so you can walk to the top. We were rewarded with this view!

We didn’t ride on the trolley but I did snap this picture and the proceeded to make it look like a cheap postcard you’d find in one of the souvenir shops.

palm tree!

We came across this fun vine wall along our walk so we had to snap a few pictures

We spent the rest of our time walking around Fisherman’s Wharf, which has a super fun atmosphere. But my legs were hurting so bad at this point that we didn’t stay too terribly long. We did swing by Pier 39 to see the sea lions that hang out there.

We were wiped out by the time we got back to the hotel. We found a random pizza place and walked (again, ouch!) there and back and decided to use the rest of our $100 food voucher on some room service dessert. We were cracking up with the fact that this is what we got with our remaining $40 so I had to take a picture. But hey! I didn’t have to walk anywhere to get it.

Our last day started out at an amazing bakery, which I’ll share a bit more about on my next post. And then we just tried to find a few things to do to kill time before our flight. I ended up seeing this place on the map and I’m so happy I did. It’s called Twin Peaks and the view was amazing, looking out over all of San Francisco.

Thanks for sticking around and reading! Honestly I’m more excited about my iphone post, coming up next! And if you have any questions about what I thought was and wasn’t worth our time, I’d be happy to answer!

Part One–HERE
Part Two–HERE

April 28, 2016