San Francisco in a Day

My husband and I jetted off to San Francisco for his 50th birthday and our anniversary.  We have been to southern California a number of times but have never visited San Francisco. Napa was on my husbands bucket list.  We flew on Air Canada out of Toronto, it was a 5 hour flight.  We arrived in San Francisco at 11:00am their time (just in time for lunch, as my husband would say).  We picked up our checked luggage and rushed off to the car rental desk.  We were greeted by a huge line.  I waiting in the line while my husband went off looking for alternatives to pick up our rental.  He found a kiosk where you speak to an agent via computer, I guess it is through Skype.  This saved us probably 2 hours.  These kiosks are people who have North American driver’s licences otherwise you are waiting in line, sorry.

We were staying in San Francisco for the night before driving to Napa for a couple of days.

From the airport we decided to drive to our hotel, The Club Quarters, to see the area and get our bearings.  Our hotel was very close to Bay Bridge and Pier 1.  We drove down to Washington St. and parked the car.  We walked around looking for somewhere to have lunch.  There are several restaurants and food places along the Pier  but they were all super jam packed…..I guess because it was lunch time and all the people who work close by go there for lunch.

 

We settled on a burger place.  I don’t remember the name but they had grass fed burgers and they had seats for us to sit down!!

After lunch we walked around the Pier for a bit.  It was a beautiful day.  Warm and sunny.

This is Bay Bridge.

Trying to take a selfie 🙂

 

The Yogi in me wanting to do yoga poses everywhere 🙂

I love being by the water – it’s so calming.

 

We decided to drive to Fisherman’s Wharf – it was only about a 10 minute drive.

It was SUPER busy.

It was weird………..the temperature changed.  At Bay Bridge it was sunny and warm but closer to the Golden Gate Bridge it was overcast, windy and chilly.  (remember, we are only 10 minutes away -what happened)

After seeing the choppy water, my husband did not want to venture out on a boat to see Alcatraz Island.

Alcatraz from afar.

We wanted to get a closer view of the Golden Gate Bridge so we got back in the car and just started to drive.

Now it’s sunny……weird.

The views are absolutely stunning

You can’t go to San Francisco without driving on Lombard Street.  Honestly, as we were driving up Lombard Street I started to freak out.  We don’t have any street like this in Toronto – not this steep.  It felt like the car was going to flip backwards.

It felt like the cars were going to roll back into us.

There are so many tourists there checking out the zig zag part of the street.  I feel bad for the people who live there but I guess they knew that there would be a lot of attention on that street.

It is so steep that there are stairs going down the side walks.

It is an amazing view.

 

Trying to take a selfie again

The cars have to drive 5 km an hour – maybe not even that fast.

Our drive back to our hotel.  (I just noticed the sign – we did not stay at the North Beach Hotel lol)

Here is another insanely steep street.

You know it’s steep when there the sidewalks are stairs to walk up the road.  Thank goodness they don’t get snow.

We ended up checking into our hotel just before dinner time.   We stayed at the Club Quarters in San Francisco.  It is a great hotel. I didn’t take any pictures of our room.  There were filtered water stations with water bottles to fill on every floor. Checking in was a breeze.  Everyone was friendly.

We had dinner at the restaurant joined to the hotel.  We found a great coffee shop near by, Peets Coffe.  It was great coffee.

After dinner we went to The View for drinks and a view.  Only problem was that we had no view because it was overcast so here is a picture of what it would of looked like

Gorgeous views.
We decided to head back to our hotel so we ordered Uber.  We were getting up early the next day to drive to Napa.

Our northern California adventure continues…………..