This spring we took a trip to San Francisco. I spent the months prior trying to find things to see and do. It was surprisingly hard for me to find good answers. I purchased GoCity passes for us, which I get every time we visit a city for the first time. I also booked myself a tattoo appointment. With those and a few slim suggestions, we decided to let the city tell us what we were going to do with the rest of our time.
Everyone asked us how long we would be gone. "The 17th through the 22nd" we would reply. Almost everyone responded with a "oh wow, that's a long time", which I was confused about because it really isn't. I wouldn't be gone from work for even a week. I suppose most people see visiting a city as a three day trip-a weekend outing. The biggest part of all that, is that two days are used on traveling to the destination. Sometimes we are lucky and can fly out early and return late, but we didn't have direct flights so it took a little longer. This gave us 4 days to explore the city.
We flew out of Dane County Regional Airport (you can read more about why I love flying from MSN here). Our flights to San Francisco was with Delta. We had to fly all the way to Atlanta just to fly back out to California.
Pictured below is a selfie from ATL, flying above Atlanta, a display at SFO, and one of the many hearts scattered across San Francisco.
Once we got into San Francisco, we went straight to the hotel to drop off our luggage. Jack in the Box is one of my favorite California fast food joints, so we walked to the nearest one so I could grab my Midnight Munchie. I was able to squeeze in one activity for the night. I was a bit nervous about it since we'd miss it if our flight(s) were delayed at all. Thankfully everything went smoothly so we were on our way to Potion Putt.
I found Potion Putt from the SF Bucket Listers Instagram. Mike is a big DnD fan and I love fantasy themed things, so I thought a wizard themed mini golf course would be fun and different. There were about 9 holes. Each hole being super short, taking about 3 strokes each (more for me since I am bad at golf). There were drinks available for purchase, but we didn't grab any. At $19.50 a person, I didn't see the value. It would have been perfect at $10.
The Civic Center was lit up a beautiful green for St. Patrick's Day.
Breakfast was the best sausage croissant I had ever had from Latte Express San Francisco.
Latte Express
Big Bus is my first go to when visiting a new city. I always hype up Go City passes and it's time I talked more about the Big Bus. This is a hop on, hop off ride. So we usually do one loop to get an idea of the area then utilize the bus the best we can to visit places it would be harder to get to on another day. Not only does it make a great mode of transportation, but we also learned a ton of history!
We got on the Big Bus at Union Square since our hotel was right down the road. We rode past the Civic Center which we visited on another day. Alamo Square-famous for the Painted Ladies-had banned tour buses from driving up that road. We could get off about a block away so a lot of tourists got off there. I had no idea Haight Street was a thing and immediately fell in love when we drove through. We drove through Golden Gate Park where I had hoped to see the Japanese Tea Garden. Thankfully we took the Bus first, so I could see they had some construction going on so we tabled our visit until next time. There were a lot of interesting statues in that area that I’m excited to visit again. We drove over the Golden Gate Bridge which was terrifying on top of a bus. There was a stop at North Vista Point, where I had actually slept overnight at back in 2017. We decided to stay on the bus at this stop too since we could see most from the top of the bus. Back over the bridge, we had a pretty good view of the Palace of Fine Arts. As much as I wanted to see it, we just never had the chance. I loved the ladies peering into the columns. The “first” stop for the bus is in the Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf area but we stayed on until we had completed our circle. We got to see more of downtown and hear some of the stories that made San Fran. Two of the big ones being the fire of 1851 and the 1906 earthquake. The Ferry Building’s clock stopped at 5:04 during the 1989 earthquake.
Riding the Big Bus
After finishing our tour, we stayed on the bus to visit Haight St. We grabbed lunch from Flippin Burger-it was so good! It was fun to look around at all the art and quirky stores. I picked up one or two souvenirs.
Haight St
When we hopped back on, it was the last bus of the day, so we had to get off at the Pier, which worked out well for us. I wanted to take some pics at the Hard Rock Cafe to show off my Hard Rock overalls! The 7-11 at the bus stop was playing orchestra music, which is something I don't experience everyday!
We took a walk back to the hotel. It was hard going up such steep hills, but the views with the sun slowly setting made it completely worth it. We walked through Chinatown.
After a refresh and resting our feet, it was time for dinner and Mike had his eyes set on Fogo de Chão. This is a Brazilian steakhouse and for $71 we got all the meat and sides our little hearts desired. Which for me, a snack-er not a meal-er, was very hard to eat $71 worth. But I think I made up for it on their tasty salad bar.
Earlier in the week, I made us a reservation for GoCar. After some breakfast at Ihop (our travel tradition) we wandered Fisherman's Wharf until our reservation started.
Once we got to GoCar, we had to sign some paperwork along with others in our boarding group so it took a little while to get started. Our instructions came from a short video that quickly explained how the car worked and how to follow the GPS. Turns out, this wasn't a mini car as I had assumed but a motorcycle. I had taken motorcycle lessons a few years ago but failed pretty badly. So at this point, I was SHAKING. I was already anxious riding around San Francisco and going up the steep hills in a car, let alone a MOTORCYCLE. After more paperwork, we were given the keys and let loose.
The GoCity pass gave us the hour tour with the GoCar. Most others had the 2 hour tour and one group had the 8+ hour tour. These other tours give opportunity to stop and get out, a mode of transportation to tour the city. Something to keep in mind if you decide to ride them. Of course, if you pull into a parking space, you need to push it back out. We did drive successfully with a stop at the Golden Gate Bridge, where we did have to utilize the push back option. After that, we decided to just keep going and not stop.
Somewhere along the route, the GPS wasn't very clear on where we needed to turn for the hour route, so we ended up on the two hour route. There were a few other times the GPS would push us to go farther out and then sideline the shorter route.
I was PANICKED when I realized we were on the longer route, and had to start going up steep hills. I just imagined taking my foot of the brake, and the car sliding back into the car behind me. All ended well and honestly, I would 100% do the GoCar again, just not where there are steep hills and following the route a lot closer. It was nice to be out on the open road and experience the city in a new way.
After we returned the GoCar, we hopped a bus to The Presidio where the Walt Disney Family museum is. On our walk in, I found two four leaf clovers. I missed St. Patrick's Day by two days, but still excited to find them since nothing was growing yet back in Wisconsin.
The Walt Disney Family Museum was one of the highlights of our trip. I am a huge Disney fan, but my fandom mostly lies in the history of Walt Disney and the parks. The museum was very detailed and I learned so much that I didn't know about previously. They even talked extensively of the 1941 strike. There were a lot of pieces to the collection, from paints used in animation to the Oscar Shirley Temple presented to Walt Disney for Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Unfortunately, there was so much to look at so I read a lot in the beginning and started to scan towards the end of the museum. I'm excited to return one day and spend less time in the beginning and more time towards the end.
We were both pretty hungry coming out of the museum, but there isn't a whole lot of options in that area (I need to get better at packing sacks). As we walked out, we walked through the Lucas Film offices and visited the statues of Yoda, Philo Farnsworth, and Eadweard James Muybridge. This is a beautiful area, so if you like to relax on vacation, I suggest hanging out here for a while. We grabbed a snack and drinks from the Starbucks there.
My planning was a bit off, so we waited an hour for the bus to arrive. Only for it to be the wrong bus for our passes. Instead of waiting longer, we broke down and got a Uber back to the hotel. We walked over to the Westfield Centre to grab some dinner. I tried the Lapsang Souchong Milk Tea from Pink Pink Tea Shoppe and a create your own" poke bowl from Big Fish Little Fish.
We took a break in the hotel for a bit and then rode the bus over to bao. I had seen them on Instagram and needed to go. Mike had some dumplings while I had the red bean bao and the adorable coconut bunnies. They were so cute it was hard to eat them. But they were also so sweet and delicious that it was really easy to eat them.
We started our day with breakfast from Pinecrest diner which called themselves the "best breakfast in San Francisco". We had a new experience here as we stood in line for a table, the host came out and asked if any of us would like to share a table. So, we joined another couple in a booth. It was cool to just sit and talk with strangers. They were visiting San Francisco for the weekend and lived a couple hours away so we swapped stories of our San Francisco adventures. The breakfast was really great too since it was a classic diner breakfast.
