San Francisco Day 2

September 1st

Sunday we did a whole lot of riding and walking and walking and riding ;)  First we took a historic streetcar down to Union Square, and from there we walked down to a bakery, Tartine, for breakfast (thanks to a friend of a friend, Amanda, for some food ideas this day). Just before we got there my memory card died :(  We'd completely forgotten to charge it the night before.  I was so bummed. And I left the point-and-shoot at the hotel, so I told Trent we'd have to head back after breakfast because I wasn't willing to take pictures on my phone the whole day.  Darn.

I got a chocolate croissant and Trent got some quiche.  It was delish! We were both satisfied :)  Then we turned around and went all the way back to the hotel (not a short ride with all of the stops) :/  We both napped for half an hour while the camera was charging.

Since our plans for the day were already completely shifted, we decided to go check out the famous cable cars and take a ride.  It was really neat!

These next 4 pictures are from our ride.

You can see the cable car down ahead of us.

And this is when it broke down and they told us to all get off..haha.

We got off and started the long trek back to Union Square.  On this day my right knee started killing me.  I kept telling Trent, "I am officially getting old.  I've never had any trouble with my knees."  It was particularly painful walking downhill :/  We had to take it slow.

Crazy that someone lives in those apartments up there!

Made it to Union Square, the shopping district :)

It was kind of fun to see all of the shopping.  If we had had a few more days, we would've stopped to shop for a bit.  I feel like it's been forever since we've gone shopping!

More cable cars.

Got a picture of the streetcar that we took in the morning and later that evening.

We literally headed right back to where we'd been for breakfast. Walked past all of the same fun homes ;)

Tartine Bakery is the one on the corner with black.  It was weird b/c it didn't have any signage or anything, but we knew it had to be it (in the morning) because there was a line out the door.

We walked just 2 doors down and had lunch at Delfina Pizzeria.  We get a Geico magazine every once in a while (b/c we have their insurance), and before the trip I happened on an article with their choices for Top 10 Pizza in the U.S., and this was #7.

Trent's in this picture, among all of the other people ;)

We got the Salsiccia, which was basically a supreme pizza (sausage, tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, and mozzarella).  It was good, but we were kind of surprised they put it in the Top 10.  It wasn't anything we'd rave about.

Then we were off again.

We walked through the Castro District (one of the first gay neighborhoods in the U.S.) on our way to Golden Gate Park.

So here's the deal - we thought we'd go to Golden Gate Park because we thought there must be a good view from there, somewhere, of the Golden Gate Bridge.  There were also 2 more attractions we could knock off from our CityPASS.  We had our map handy (such tourists) and started our trek.  We'd probably walked like 1/2 a mile when Trent noticed a note on the map saying the park was not to scale (they shrunk it to fit on the map) and that it's actually like 4 miles from one end to the other..ha.  Oh man!  It was already like 4 in the afternoon (dang camera incident messed up our day) and we knew it would be getting dark before long and we really wanted to see the Painted Ladies, so we turned around.  As you can tell, we really aren't trip planners and often don't really know what we're doing.  But that's kind of the fun of it for us.

A few pictures from our walk in the park.

Loved this house - very East Coast :)

We happened upon Bi-Rite Creamery on our way to the Painted Ladies.  It's an ice cream place that our friend of a friend mentioned, so we stopped.  I was going to try the Strawberry Balsamic, but once we got inside and realized the Ricanelas was cinnamon w/ snickerdoodles, I knew I had to have it!  And I'm so glad I did - it was amazing!  Trent got a scoop of Strawberry Balsamic and a scoop of Honey Lavendar.  I don't know if it's just b/c we'd been walking for a while or what, but it was heaven!  Seriously so good!  I would honestly recommend this place to anyone headed to San Fran.  

Seriously, GO!

We made it to Alamo Square and walked up the hill...

...and were so relieved when we saw this!

The Painted Ladies!

They are in the opening credits of Full House :)

The only picture we got with the 2 of us the whole trip!  Love it!

Now that we'd regained our energy, we decided to try Golden Gate Park once more and take a bus to the other end.

A few pictures from walking to the bus stop.

We got dropped off at the far western end of the park by the Great Highway and Ocean Beach, still hoping we'd get a view of the Golden Gate Bridge, but we never did.  We didn't know what we were doing..ha.

It was kind of fun to see the Dutch Windmill there.

The Pacific Ocean.

Also the Murphy Windmill.

The sun was really starting to set, so we hopped on a bus, thinking we were headed in the right direction.  Eventually it would've been (it goes in a big circle), but we had traveled outside of downtown San Francisco (where we'd been the whole trip) and got to a stop and the guy parked and said, "This is the end and I get a 15 minute break."  At that point we decided maybe the bus wasn't our best option and we hopped on the Light Rail.  It took us a while to get back to a place we recognized, but we made it!

The Bay Bridge all lit up before we made it back to our hotel.

We had dinner at Pier 39 at Swiss Louis Italian and Seafood Restaurant and picked up some fudge afterward before we called it a night.

While it probably sounds like our day totally didn't go as planned (it didn't) and that we were lost most of the day (probably half the day), we still really had fun!  I honestly loved just walking around the city and being with Trent.  What more could I ask for?!  And now we'll have a much better feel for things when we go the next time ;)