Thursday, January 15, 2015

Throwback Thursday - Honeymoon in San Francisco!

 
Good morning world!  Sophia & I are having one of those stay in bed where its warm & do nothing kind of days. Its only mid January, but Nicholas & I are already starting to plan where we want to go for our 1 year wedding anniversary in September, so I've been googling a few amazing options to keep on our radar as it gets closer.  Since I have vacations on my mind, I thought I'd throw it back to 4 months ago where we had our honeymoon in San Fran.  I was 6.5 months pregnant & really didn't want too long of a trip with a long flight, so we thought San Fran would be perfect as it was only 2 hours away.  I've been to Cali many times, but since I had never been to San Fran & Nick had never been to Cali at all, we were sold on our destination choice.
 
Here are some highlights from our first time in San Fran together!
 
We woke up at 3am to make it to YVR by 430am for our 6am flight - which got us to SFO at 8am.  Of course we flew business (I justified it that it was our honeymoon, & of course needed extra leg & cuddle room) & we watched the most amazing sunrise while we half slept.
 
When it came time to booking our hotel, I ended up using Priceline (you know those William Shatner commercials you see for hotel deals).  I had never used it before, but a girlfriend had recently used it and convinced me its a good option as even though you don't know the exact hotel you are booking, you can filter it to what you are looking for & see reviews.  Since I knew I wanted to stay in either the Financial District or Fishermans Wharf District - I set my filters to those locations.  I also selected 3.5 stars and up.  I must say its pretty pricey to stay in those areas without finding a good deal.  Our options for the financial district were 300-600/night and that was the deal price.  Fishermans Wharf was 200/400 night.  200 was the price range I was aiming for, so I opted for that - and we lucked out.  We stayed at the Holiday Inn 2 blocks from the water & our room had a view of the wharf too!

 
When we arrived in San Fran, we took a shuttle to our hotel (got to our hotel around 930am) and asked if we could leave our bags there since check-in was 3pm.  Luckily they had early check-in for no extra fee & we got to go into our room & get ready before hitting the city!  We were starving so clearly our first stop would be for brunch.  We walked 2 blocks down to the Wharf and were surrounded with so many sunny patios open and ready to feed us.  Our first stop was Boudin at the Wharf - which was super famous for their housemade bread & chowder bowls.  Nick would probably live off of bread & chowder if he could - so this was like his food heaven!
 
After getting our grub on, we walked along their seawall for awhile, chilled on the beach & went on the only remaining battleship from Normandy that still sails.  It was something we both really wanted to do, since my family from Denmark fought in wwii (and even saved over 1,000 people by smuggling them to Switzerland), but that's a whole other story.  It was super cool as we had full access to like everything from their steam room, to their guns on deck.
 


 
Afterwards, we hit up a few happy hour patios & made use of their super cheap appies & Nick checked out some San Fran beer.  Then we headed on over to board the Catamaran Yacht for a sunset cruise :)  The yacht fit like 100 people, but there were only around 20 people on board which made for a super romantic sunset cruise.  It went around Alcatraz, and under the Golden Gate bridge and just cruised around the bay area.  Oh - the boat also gave use 2 free drink tickets each since they had a full stacked bar & since I was pregnant, Nick made good use of those tickets.
 
So Nick & I have this tradition that started awhile back where we always stop & kiss under every bridge we walk under - so of course we made use of every time the boat went under the Golden Gate bridge :)


Day 2!  Day 1 was so amazing & since we only had 2.5 days in San Fran, we definitely wanted to make the most out of our second day.  We did the Big Bus tour (which neither of us had ever done in any city before).  Its a whole day pass, so you can get off and on as often as you want at any of the destination stops.  The whole tour is around 3 hours, and showcases all of the best stops in San Fran.  We figured we would ride the bus once without getting off, learn about San Fran & then take the ride again getting off at the stops we wanted to see.  This also meant that we would get to go over the Golden Gate bridge 4 times (and start a new tradition of kissing on top of the bridge too!)

We stopped at the Presidio, Golden Gate Park (they have wild Bison that randomly roam the park - so look out for Bison photo bombing your selfie).  We also saw the church that Monroe & DiMaggio wanted to get married at - but wouldn't marry them (so they showed up there after they got married for pictures & also spat on the steps in rebellion).  We also saw the Parliament building that has a 14 kt gold roof - & we saw a whole lot of beautiful houses on the sloped city streets.
 
We also stopped in the Haight Ashbury district to shop and I discovered the largest record store I had ever been to in my life - Amoeba Records.  At this moment I was so glad that Nicholas had a checked bag (as I only had carryon) and now I could shop my heart out for cheap vinyl.  Needless to say, we lost track of time and missed the last Big Bus.  It wasn't so bad as google said it was only a 2 hour walk back to our hotel & we figured we could sight see on the way.  We also had to walk through the most shady area (like the skid row on San Fran) called the Tenderloin district.  We tried to avoid it, but I guess its a super big area.  Luckily I had Nick by my side, so no one bugged us as we quickly moved through it and back to the safe area :)  We walked some incredible steep streets, but were rewarded with the gorgeous views from the top (one where we watched the sun go down and city light up).  We were so glad to get back to our hotel and rest our feet.
 
Day 3 was a short day, as our flight was at 530, so we wanted to be at the airport by 4 (which meant we left our hotel by 3ish).  We met up with one of my gfs for brunch that I hadn't seen in about 4 years since my last trip to Cali.  We also checked out Lombard street and finished off all of our shopping.

 
That's a wrap for my throwback to San Fran!  Let me know if you've ever been and what your highlights were :)
 
Back to my snuggles with Sophie.
 

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