San Francisco: Day 1

When we travel, I usually refrain from taking the entire week (Monday – Friday) off as I like to save up as much time as possible throughout the year. This year, I reached 4 years with my company and received an extra week of vacation! Woo-hoo!! :)

With the extra week, I decided to "live a little" and well, San Francisco was all sorts of amazing. We did as many touristy things that a first timer to San Francisco does and because of that I took lots and lots of pictures. That is obviously no surprise but guess what is a bit of a surprise? I was not alone. Sean took tons of pictures this trip too! It was weird (what came over him?) and awesome! But I don’t blame him. San Francisco is absolutely beautiful. I know this isn’t the word many people would use to describe San Francisco but I’m not one of them. It is well known that there are many homeless people that live on the streets; but being from the city this isn’t an uncommon sight to me. It is probably why it didn’t make San Francisco any less beautiful to me. Unfortunately in big cities this is a common problem, but I don’t think it is something that should deter anyone from visiting.

I want this trip to be well documented here so I'm thinking that I'll share bits and pieces at a time to avoid overload. I’ll most likely share a San Francisco post, sprinkled with other topics, until I am done recapping San Francisco. It’ll be easier on me and I think you won’t be bombarded with all the San Francisco posts as well.

Alrighty, where should I begin? Day one, of course! We arrived in San Francisco pretty early on Sunday and by 11:30am we were checked in & our belongings dropped off in our hotel room. We stayed at Zephyr and although the hotel was decent, I don’t think I’d recommend it. The rooms are small (which was no surprise) and cute but our bathroom had this wet, musty scent that we just could not get rid of. They had a game room downstairs which we really liked & we made sure to play a few games every night before dinner. The hotel does not have a restaurant currently but they do have a food truck which was convenient our first day.

I loved this light fixture!



We had a dart board in our room that Sean absolutely loved.
Anytime he hit his target you would have thought he won a million dollars.

Within minutes of checking in, we were in our rental car heading to Lombard Street to check out the crookedest street. This was the first thing on our very detailed agenda courtesy of Sean. I should mention that the weather surprised us the most. When we were stalking the 10 day forecast, all we saw was rain and clouds. That was a bummer but we packed appropriately. What we got instead were bright blue skies, no rain and weather in the mid 60s. Basically, we couldn't have asked for better weather. I mean, we could have asked for weather in the 70s but when we were expecting mid 50s and rain, this was us hitting the weather lottery!

We drove down Lombard Street and it was so neat. Sean drove very carefully (5 miles per hour) because the turns were so tight. We ended up getting out of our car that way we could get some pictures (and be up close and personal) and man did my legs get a workout. To be honest, my calves were burning most of our trip in San Francisco. A good burn though!

After Lombard Street we drove the short distance to Fisherman's Wharf. It is such a lively area with restaurants, shops and street entertainers. And if you're a seafood lover like me, you'll definitely get your fill here! From Fisherman's Wharf we walked to Pier 39 which is so close in location to Fisherman's Wharf. I think I should also mention that the views here are stunning!

We listened to a one man band and he was fantastic. We watched a man perform tricks that if we tried we'd easily break our necks. We also checked out the sea lions which was a big attraction. We did a mirror maze which was tons of fun. If you have not done a mirror maze do it if you're ever given an opportunity. I can't tell you the amount of times I slammed into a mirror thinking I was safe to proceed. I ended up just having my arms pushed out in front of me for protection. Lots of laughs and lots of ooops.

Our first day in San Francisco was off to a great start!