California Recap - Part 2

I was a little under the weather this week, so I'm finally back to wrap up our California vacation recap. We picked up a rental car on Tuesday and headed to San Francisco to check out the city. We first went to the Golden Gate Bridge and walked half way across, took lots of pictures and walked back. It was pretty foggy, so our pictures weren't great.

The view toward San Francisco.

That's Marin County behind me (Sausalito).

After we'd had our fix of the bridge, we drove through Sausalito but opted for In-N-Out Burger instead of getting out and walking around there. :) Matt had never been to an In-N-Out so we really had to do it. We then headed up to Muir Woods, which is a gorgeous redwood forest practically in San Francisco. It's crazy how you can cross the GGB and then go up a mountain and feel like you're in the middle of no where.





After we finished up there, we drove down the PCH to Stinton Beach. It was something like 65 degrees and there were people in bathing suits and even in the water! Crazies. We drove back to Alamo for our last night there.

We headed to San Fran on Wednesday around lunch time and stayed there the rest of our trip. We went to Golden Gate Park and had every intention of going to the California Academy of Sciences, but the line was honestly about a mile long. So, we walked around the park and decided to go grab lunch. We ate at Red's Java, which is a hole in the wall at Pier 30 that Matt saw on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. Matt got the fish and chips, and holy heck, that was the best fried fish I've ever had. I had their burger which is done on French bread and it was good. Some time after that we checked into our hotel, returned our rental car and did a little shopping at Old Navy in Union Square. Gotta love heading to SF to shop at ON! Neither one of us had a jacket or sweater, so we both bought zip-up hoodies and a few other things. That night we had sushi at Godzila Sushi in Western Addition/Lower Pacific Heights. It was just a little neighborhood sushi joint that was recommended by a friend, and it was good and very good to the wallet. We had some cocktails at a bar down the street after that, made friends with the bartender, and returned to our hotel for a good night's sleep.

On Thursday, we tried to get an Alcatraz trip booked, but there were no openings, so we booked a GGB cruise instead. We took a lot of pictures this day near our hotel on Nob Hill, walking down the crazy steep streets, in Chinatown, and in the bay. We had awesome dim sum at a place in Chinatown that I don't remember the name of and then we walked a very long way to Pier 39 with a pitstop along the way at Coit Tower.

California Street in front of our hotel.

Our hotel is the one in the middle with the flag on top of it - Intercontinental Mark Hopkins.

I don't know why I thought this was funny... prob because there's underwear and I'm very immature.

Bay Bridge

A view of the GGB you don't see every day.

Alcatraz

That night Matt's aunt, Mariah, and new hubby, Brad, came to the city to take us to dinner. We had a great meal at Jackson Fillmore, an Italian restaurant in Pacific Heights. It was very good.

Friday we hit up Haight Ashbury. We decided to take the bus and then walk... well, it was a long dang walk from where we got off the bus, and I think I burned 500 calories with all of the hills. Haight was okay... I don't ever need to see it again. It was like Little Five Points in Atlanta, but bigger. After walking around for a while, we went to Alembic and got some cocktails. Matt had a delicious Bloody Mary and I had the Sazerac. I won't get it again, but it was one of their specialty drinks. This place made everything from scratch, pretty much. It was fun to watch the bartender. We then took a bus back to Pacific Heights and grabbed a few drinks at a bar there before heading back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. We had an amazing dinner at Kokkari Estiatorio, a Greek restaurant in the business district. Oh my, it was sooooooooo good, and one of our most expensive dinners to date. We did splurge and got wine that was more than we'd usually spend, but it was worth it... so good and complemented our food perfectly. After dinner, we found a nice bar down the street from our hotel and made friends with the bartender, like we do everywhere. Then it was to bed before our long flight back on Saturday. We didn't bring the camera out with us Friday, so no pics. :( It was a great trip, and we both had trouble adjusting back to real life. I think we need to win the lottery, so we can do that all the time. I love traveling with my man.