Lunch in San Fran

I love big cities. D.C., New York City, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Philadelphia… So, it probably doesn’t surprise anyone, Scott included, that when I was plotting our road trip from Pinnacles NP to his Nana’s north of Sacramento, I insisted we “swing by San Francisco” for lunch on our way. It was an hour drive out of the way (plus whatever time we spent in the city) but I really, really wanted to do it.

San Francisco is one of my favorite cities. I knew we couldn’t do it all with the kids in a few short hours, so I made a short list of what I wanted to do. We had to be quick because our main objective was to get to Nana’s…

We started with a drive down the crookedest street in the world, Lombard St.

From there we headed to Pier 39. We all enjoyed seeing the sites and walking around in some of the specialty shops.

The Golden Gate Bridge was covered in fog.

We LOVED watching the sea lions. Their antics were so amusing.

We looked out at Alkatraz

and posed in front of a heart.

Next we enjoyed some San Francisco sour dough bread for lunch…. shaped like a turtle (thanks to cousin Jenna for the recommendation).

Before leaving Pier 39 we posed in front of two Wyland’s whaling walls. We have a thing for whales.

Then it was off to Chinatown!!!

Our oldest daughter has been wanting to visit China since she did a report on the country in the first grade. We couldn’t get her to the Great Wall this vacation, but we were excited to take her to one of the bigger Chinatowns that we knew of. She had saved her money to buy some souvenirs here and she enjoyed shopping.

There wasn’t time for a cable car ride but the kids enjoyed watching them go through the streets… our 6 year old read the book ‘Maybelle the Cable Car’, while driving in the streets of San Francisco (written by the same author as Mike Mulligan’s Steam Engine).

We headed for the Golden Gate bridge, hoping the fog had burned off.

It hadn’t, but the kids were thrilled to actually drive across it on our way to Gana’s house.

I love San Francisco and will eagerly leap at any opportunity to spend a little time in that fun and pretty city. We saw what we came to see, had fun, and were on our way to visit Scott’s nana, four hours after we arrived in town.