Thursday, April 30th - Arrival
After school I picked up Melissa, drove to my Mom's, and she
dropped us off at the airport. Our southwest flight was pleasant and we got an
entire row to ourselves, SCORE! When we arrived in San Fran, it was 9:45pm
their time, but it felt like 11:45pm to us. We followed the signs and found our
way to the BART rail. It was another 30 minutes before we got to our stop, and
then it was a few blocks away from our hostel in downtown. By the time we
checked-in, it was 11pm PST. The hostel experience is a lot like a college dorm
room or going to summer camp. We had a female only room with 2 sets of bunk
beds and an ensuite bathroom. The room was empty when we got there, but one bed
was occupied. After Melissa and I made our beds we passed out. At some point in
the night, our mysterious roommate showed up, but we never heard her (creepy).
I saw a figure standing in the room at one point, and Melissa referred to her
as "blonde bun." She took off before the sun rose anyway.
Friday, May 1st - Day 1
We had a wake-up call by a car alarm around 5am, which felt like 7
am to us. We were able to stay in bed for a bit but eventually got up around 7
am PST. Getting ready was a breeze everyday because we planned this out to be a
"working" vacation, with lots of activity! The biggest perk about the
hostel was the included breakfast! Delicious bagels w/ cream cheese and coffee
every morning. We planned to start our day by biking the Golden Gate Bridge. We
opted to pick up our bikes near Fisherman's Wharf rather than by our hostel to
avoid biking in the streets. When we mapped the location and saw that it was
only 1.6 miles away, we thought, "Okay, no big deal. We can totally handle
this and walking is free!" Walked outside our hostel and Oh. My. God. Those.
Hills. Are. No. Joke. We wondered what our booties would look like if we had to
endure hills like that daily.
Once we got our bikes we biked 4 miles to the start of the bridge,
across the bridge (1.7 miles) and back, and then had to make a decision as to
where to go next. Looking at the map, Golden Gate Park didn't look so far away,
so we started on a journey down the coast. Did I mention the HILLS were
insane?? We got a little bit lost, and someone asked us if we needed help with
directions. When we told her we were heading toward Golden Gate Park and not
the bridge, she looked at us like we were crazy. We took that as a sign to stop
our trek and start a new journey back to the Wharf to return the bikes
considering our bummies were in a considerable amount of pain. When we looked
at the distance between our location and where we needed to take the bikes, it
was quite daunting. Clearly we made a poor decision when going towards Golden
Gate Park. So much for not biking in the streets of San Francisco... Since we
had to go east, we went a little out of our way to see the Full House house,
ate at a random pizza shop, and saw the Painted ladies. At the painted ladies,
we were 3 miles away from the bike place and felt like crying. We even called
an Uber driver to see if he could fit 2 bikes in his car. No such luck. We
started our journey of painfully riding the bikes, but mostly WALKING the bikes up ridiculous hills on the
sidewalk. I was also terrified of riding in the traffic, so even when there
weren't hills, we walked the bikes on sidewalks of busy streets. Looking back
on this now it is funny... but at the time it was painful. Also Melissa got
"brushed" with a car door while riding the bike in the bike lane,
thus confirming my fears in riding bikes in the street.
It was a joyful feeling to get rid of the bikes, and we had a
couple of hours to kill before our Alcatraz tour. We walked around Fisherman's
Wharf, found a random street outlet to charge our phones for a bit, checked out
the Sea Lions on Pier 39, then grabbed some coffee at Pier 33 waiting for our
Alcatraz ferry. Melissa also scored a free muffin. The Alcatraz Night Tour was
pretty neat, but we were really chilly. We didn't take too many photos here
because we were just taking it all in. I like to learn things when I am on
vacation, and now I am interested in checking out some documentaries on
Alcatraz.
According to my iPhone we walked 16.25 miles, and are unsure about
the distance we biked. Needless to say we took an uberPOOL back to the hostel.
When we arrived we were able to shower and get in bed before meeting our two
new roomies for the remainder of the trip. Wendy was from China, traveling
alone, and one lady who talked A LOT was from Philadelphia. We couldn't
remember her name, but she was traveling to San Fran for a work trip, and chose
to stay a few extra days by herself to see the sights. I wish I could travel
for my job. Melissa and I had no issue passing out on this night.
Saturday, May 2nd - Day 2
Once again, we were awakened by a car alarm going off
ridiculously early, and decided it was best to just get up and get day 2
started. We had breakfast around 8am on this day and the hostel kitchen was
much busier at this hour. I seriously could not get over how delicious the
bagels were. We talked about the main places we wanted to see on this day, and
had a general idea of which direction we needed to start walking.
1.
Union Square – just a lot cool buildings and
shopping. We checked this place out for a hot 5 minutes and took off for the
next destination.
2.
Civic Center – I really wanted to check out City
Hall, but the way the iPhone took us to get there was pretty shady. Don’t walk
down Golden Gate when visiting San Francisco because you will be gawked at by
the homeless. There is a BIG homeless problem in San Francisco… City Hall was
pretty. Too bad it was the weekend because I would have loved to go inside.
3.
Mission District – We had a groupon tour to do
in the Mission district later in the day so we took the opportunity to check
out this vintage store called, “Stuff” recommended to me by a friend. We didn’t
walk out with any treasures but loved looking around the store. We were in
there for about an hour. We also took a tour of Mission Dolores.
4.
Castro District – Of course I loved the rainbow
flags and all of the pride I saw. We walked down the street and looked around
in some shops our short time here.
We then walked back to the Mission District and ate lunch at
a place called The Grove. It was yummy and we were close to where we had to
meet for our Mission Distrcit “Drunken History Tour” that I bought on Groupon.
We chilled for an hour at a dog park without a dog. We did the lamest tour
known to man from 3-5pm. Groupon has already heard about our unfortunate
experience. We ‘uber’ed it back to our hostel because I promised Melissa she
could get a nap in on this day. It was
nice to take a quick shower and rest before our next plan. I had purchased a
pub crawl groupon and was promised heavily discounted beverages at 4 different
places. We got to our location, checked it out, and ditched it. After our
Mission tour, we weren’t about to waste our time when we can explore the city
ourselves.
We walked to Chinatown and had a late dinner. As we were
leaving Melissa spotted a frame with pictures of the President in it with the
staff and I geeked out over it. Then we walked to Lombard Street. We stopped at
a bakery in North Beach for a Canolli and Nutella Latte (YUM), and hiked up
some massive hills on Lombard street. Once we got to the top of the street we
took in the view for a while. This was Melissa’s favorite part of the trip. Our
Pub Crawl Groupon didn’t go to total waste because it came with 2 $10 vouchers
for Lyft, a service like Uber. We lyfted back to the hostel for the night.
iPhone reported that we walked 12.75 miles on this day.
Sunday, May 3rd – Day 3 and Departure
We woke up at a decent hour and had our final bagel in the
hostel. We went back to the room to do make-up and pack so that we could
check-out. Keeping our things in a locker forced us to stay organized, so packing
was a breeze. We had to take our linens down with us as we went to check out. I
forgot to mention that we stayed on the 5th floor, and the elevator
never worked, so we got to haul our things down 5 flights of stairs. After
check out we were able to leave our luggage at the hostel for no extra cost. It
was a good experience and I would definitely lodge in a hostel again.
We strolled down Grant street so that we could take in
Chinatown during the day. We also walked through North Beach again because we
were headed toward Coit Tower. It was only 1.2 miles, but again… THE HILLS.
Once we got to Coit tower, we had to walk up a lot of stairs to get to the
entrance. We got there at 9:53, and it opened at 10 am. We were the first ones
in and totally didn’t plan it. We took in the pretty 360 views of city and
reflected on how much ground we had covered in our short time there. It was a
nice way to cap off the trip.
Our flight wasn’t until 5:30pm, but we didn’t want to waste
too much energy bustling around like we did the last 2 days. We took this time
to walk to Mama’s on Washington Square, a restaurant that was highly
recommended to me by my friend Brad. His blog said something along the lines
of, “When you go to San Francisco, you will go to Mama’s, you will wait in
line, and it will be worth it.”
He was right, the line was long, and the restaurant was
small. Our wait to get inside was 2 hours. It was a good thing we had time to
kill. When we started to stand in line we weren’t that hungry, but when we go
inside we were ready. We each got a plate of Monte Cristos (Brad said it would
change my life). I got the Mama’s Cristo, and Melissa got the Famous Cristo. We
really wanted to try the French toast, so we shared a plate of that. It was all
so delicious that we could not stop eating until it was all gone. We inhaled 3
entrees between the 2 of us. All of those calories burned came back to us at
Mama’s. WHEN I go back, I will get the French toast again (seriously soooo
good) and I want to try some eggs benedict. Melissa and I collapsed in Washington Square
across the street to let our food babies settle. We laid down for bit in the
park before taking another “Lyft” back to the hostel.
We got our luggage, charged our phones for a bit, and called
an uberPool to take us to the airport. Because I sent Uber to Melissa, she had
a $20 coupon, so our trip to the airport was FREE. We got through security
right on time, and only had to wait for our plane for about 20 minutes.
We flew Virgin America back home, and it is currently my
favorite airline. I rented Selma to watch on the flight back and Melissa looked
at me like I was crazy as I cried over this incredible film. Go rent Selma if you haven’t seen it yet!
My mom and dad picked us up from the airport; I dropped
Melissa off at her place and was finally home at midnight. AMAZING trip. It was
rough having to go back to work the next day, but I would do it again in a
heartbeat! Melissa is quite the travel pal!
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