Dyl and I escaped normal life for an extended weekend in San Francisco, just the two of us! I lived there while I was going to San Francisco State University back in 2003-2004 but opted to come home after just a few semesters because I was super homesick. If you had asked me before this trip about my positive memories of my time there, they would have been limited. But being there, I was reminded of many more! The sights, the smells… memories came flooding back and Dyl graciously obliged my many “This one time, at school…” stories. Living there as a poor college student was very different than touring as an adult with my husband. We did all the fun things, almost all of which I had never done before. It was seriously the best weekend!!!

The rest of this post will probably be VERY long and boring for anyone who wasn’t there with us (read: all of you haha) but I just don’t want to forget all of the things we did and I want a place to unapologetically post all of the pictures so you’ve been warned should you choose to continue!

Day 1! We flew out late Thursday afternoon. When we got to the airport, we decided to curb check. We gave the attendant our last name and he went back to find our reservations, he poked his head out of the office an minute later and asked “Charles and Barbara Tucker?” aaaaand I died laughing. Dyl joked that our bags weren’t going to make it on our flight because I had embarrassed the guy from laughing so hard. I mean, do we LOOK like a Charles or Barbara? Dying. We called each other those names all weekend. Those are our adopted rich world traveler names now. We got to the hotel (Marriott Marquis on Mission, I’m sure there are nicer hotels, but this was perfectly fine and the location was killer! ) later that night, walked to the closest restaurant (Tropisueno) we could find which turned out to be the most delicious and poppin taco joint. The chips and salsa were amaze, as were the al pastor tacos! Walked across the street to the movie theater and saw I Feel Pretty (mostly lame).

Day 2! We slept in and then headed off to brunch at Farm:Table. THIS PLACE WAS KILLER! We got the savory tart, egg on croissant and daily toast. And hot chocolate, of course. Best way to kick off the day, we seriously should have gone back every morning. Then we walked allllll the way up and down to the Alcatraz Landing pier to catch our ferry. Can you believe I never went to the island when I lived there? Embarrassing. It was absolutely fascinating! The prison, of course. But the whole history of the island as well. And the grounds! SO beautiful! The prison workers families lived on the island so in effort to make life as normal as possible, they had community centers where they bowled and held dances and they grew luscious gardens and raised children. We took the audio tour of the prison, which you just HAVE to do. Truly fascinating. We were there for hours, until the early evening. Then we walked down to Pier 39 and got calm chowder in bread bowls (at Chart House) cuz San Francisco. We strolled some more and found ourselves at Ghiradelli’s (maaaaybe I knew thats exactly where were headed but let Dyl believe it was a coincidence) where I got my fave sea salt caramel brownie sundae. We were pretty stuffed still so we ended up not having dinner that night and instead caught another movie, A Quiet Place.

Day 3! We got picked up from the hotel at 10am to head out on our bus tour across Golden Gate bridge to Muir Woods and Sausalito. Holy beautiful! Once we got to the park, we had an hour and a half to explore before having to be back at the bus. We took a couple of the trailways and before we knew it, our time was up. I would have enjoyed more time. It was so serene and calm, straight out of movie, and the temperature was so nice. Is that a weird thing to comment on? Haha The majority of the trip was super chilly so this was nice to not be cold while we were there! We got back on the bus and headed in to Sausalito. We knew that people could rides bikes across the bridge from SF to Sausalito and hoped to be able to ride them the opposite way since our bus would be stopping there but unfortunately thats not really an option (riding the ferry back is the “back” option) so instead of getting off the bus, we stayed on it and planned on just renting bikes once we got back to SF. The weather was super windy though when we got back so we decided not to that day (unfortunately, we never made it back over the bridge wahhh). We went to Zero Zero pizza and shared the arugula salad and sausage & pepperoni pizza. Our Lyft driver on the way to there made fun of us for wanting overpriced mediocre pizza, and yes it was slightly overpriced, but it was not mediocre…it was SO good and totally worth it. We then walked over to the mall and shopping area where we caught the Powell – Mason cable car and rode it all the way down to North Beach. We were ready for a treat so we found the nearest Salt & Straw ice cream (Pacific Heights). So good. We tasted the almond brittle, roasted strawberry, coffee, honey lavender and malted chocolate chip cookie dough. Didn’t love the strawberry or the malted one but the others were so good! Get the waffle cup for sure! This location was perfect for strolling and shopping, so many great shops around there. Then we hopped in a Lyft and headed to Roma Antica for dinner. We didn’t like anything we ate there so…just don’t go there haha Then guess what…movie time! The convenience of the movie theater right across the street from the hotel! We saw Blockers.

Day 4! We walked over to the Museum of Ice Cream (V close to our hotel) and basically begged them to let us in/buy tickets/scalp tickets/ANYTHING (tickets were sold out and we didn’t know it was even there until after we landed) but they were kind of uncool about it! We didn’t get in *sad face* so we walked over to La Boulangerie to drown our sorrows with brunch. I about died over the orange juice in a pretty glass bottle, it was definitely the most delish OJ I have ever had. Also got the arugula & egg sandwich and Dyl got a club…to go take care of the Museum guys. KIDDING! He got the club sandwich. Everything was so good! And the restaurant was so dang cute. Then we walked all the freaking way to Coit Tower, which is only 1.5 miles BUT a significant part of that walk is literally straight up. LITERALLY! Ok, not literally. But basically literally. I’m still feeling that walk. The prettiest views from the top of the tower! So worth it! Then we walked another mile down and back up to the top of Lombard. That was such a fun street. Very popular and crowded but it was just fun! I can’t believe people actually live between the turns…I didn’t realize the turns were all driveways! So dang cool! And the houses were amazing too. So curious to know what they would go for. Then we caught the cable car at the top of the hill and rode that back down to Market & Powell. This was WAY more fun than the day before because we stood up on this ride. Quintessential San Francisco, like, waving at all the passerby’s, pretending you’re in a TV show intro experience. Do not skip this and do not sit! Then we took a Lyft to the Painted Ladies (I’mm basically an Olsen twin now) and then another to Baker Beach. The beach and views to the bridge were amazing. The extremely naked confident old dudes, not so much! Gag! HA! Saw at least 5. One was trying to hide between a couple rocks BUT you had to climb these rocks in order to get to a better spot to view the bridge…so maybe he wasn’t so much hiding as he was trying to sneak *peek* attack? Fail if the former, HUGE (actually, it was cold sooo little?) success if the latter. We escaped with enough eyesight left to head up the sand ladder to Battery Crosby trail for even better views of the bridge and beach/ocean. This was maybe my favorite part of the trip. I just felt really grateful for this beautiful world and my wonderful life and perfect husband and the time we had together. Then it was dinner time, we met up with some friends (who happen to be our neighbors and were randomly vacationing in SF the exact same weekend…like, WHAT? We had to get together!) at NOPA and writing this out, I’m just now realizing that we didn’t really eat much that day. I’m glad we didn’t because I was able to save lots of space so I could eat all the things! We got the warm goat cheese and tortilla soup appetizers (both amazing but the soup was the best I’ve ever had) and for entrees, we got the rotisserie chicken and the pappardelle with a side of grilled broccoli. I wasn’t a fan of the broccoli but if I could eat the rest of the meal every day forever, I would. Then we walked right next door to Bi-Rite creamery (cutest market with the prettiest fresh cut flowers). Dyl got the brown sugar ginger caramel swirl and roasted banana and I got the roasted banana and mint chip in a waffle cup. Waffle cup was second in comparison to Salt and Straw but the ice cream was better here at Bi-Rite. Seriously, amazing. Even since it was absolutely freezing outside (no sitting room inside) and we were all huddled together. Worth it! It was a very busy day and we were totally done by this point so we went back to the hotel and crashed hard.

Day 5! Slept in…although sleeping in when you’re parent is so different than when you’re a teenager…I was wide awake at 8:45! Not so much for Dyl, he can still kick it with the teens. We got up, ready and checked out by 11, grabbed some creme puffs at Beard Papas (pretty good!) and decided to find some scooters and head to the Ferry Building. The scooters are the coolest. There is an app that tracks your location and tags the locations of all scooters in your area so you just find one, scan the bar code and the scooter turns on. We found one for me pretty quickly but every other one we found for Dyl was either claimed or had a dead battery or needed maintenance or had been picked for parts. SO I slowly scooted to the ferry building and Dyl just walked beside me. Total gent. Ferry building was so rad! Had no idea what it was honestly, just that we were told to go there and i’m so glad we squeezed it in! The building is full of little shops of grab and go foods, specialty chocolates, pottery, creams and lotions, olive oils, handmade gifts, breads, books and so much more. Listen to me…Get a smore from Dandelion Chocolate. Just do it! Also, get ice cream from Humphry Slocombe. I got the Harvey Milk & Honey Graham and the Salted Caramel Cocoa Nib. This was my favorite ice cream of the trip…which is saying something because they were all so good. The combo of the sweet milk & graham with the salty bitterness of the caramel cocoa nib just couldn’t be beat. We also ate at Out the Door (The Slanted Door’s take and go menu), SO good. We got the crispy imperial rolls, a chicken bun, a pork vermicelli and a shrimp vermicelli. The rolls and bun were our favorites but everything was delish. We still had time to kill so we strolled down Embarcadero in search of more scooters. Found them and had a blast riding them by the piers all the way past 39 before we started heading back. I got some cute pics and videos and was getting really good at one-handed scooting…until I wasn’t *insert grimace emoji* and I crashed SO hard. Think of how rocks skip on water…that was my body but on the grass (THANK THE HEAVENS ABOVE there was a patch of grass to the side of me) and then my chin stopped first and my legs scorpioned over my head (you know, like Ridiculousness?) before they fell back and hit the floor. (See scooter picture of Dyl from behind…that picture had better be the best picture I’ve ever taken cuz I went down AS I was taking it.) Pretty sure I was looking straight down at the grass and I just didn’t want to look up, I was so embarrassed. My knee got ripped up and my hand and chin hurt but mostly it was just my ego that was damaged. About a minute later, I couldn’t stop laughing cuz honestly, if I had seen it happen I would have totally lost it. Even a week and a half later, I catch myself thinking about it and just laaaaaugh and Dyl says, “you thinking about your crash?”…Yup haha We switched scooters, since Dyls was significantly less powerful than mine was, and cautiously headed back to the hotel. Stopped for a last hurrah at Super Duper burger (delish), grabbed our bags and headed to the airport. We asked my parents to keep the babies up so we could see them before they went to bed and I’ll tell what, if you want to feel special and loved, go on vacay without your kids and come home. Never felt cooler!

So there ya have it, a minute-by-minute account of our wonderful weekend in San Francisco! We are so grateful to our parents for keeping such great care of our babies, they called us “grandma” and “grandpa” for days after we got home, they LOVE you guys! And so do we <3 And I’m so grateful for the opportunity we had to get away and think we should do that more often…that cool, babe? I literally think you’re the very best thing that ever happened to this world, ( not just because I want you to take me on more trips..although I won’t say no!) and I just love every second I get to spend with you! Cheese, over.