Thursday, August 2, 2012

Beside the Bay

The one week this summer that my family has been all in one place, not doing five million opposite things, was the only time we had for our last family vacation before I get a real job and my sister starts college, making it even more difficult to coordinate schedules and vacation time. So we went to San Francisco, because my sister has been wanting to go for a while [and London, her other choice, is not the best place to be a casual tourist at the moment].

Notice the fog and the bridge.
Because it's so far and we had so little time, we got to fly! I love airplanes. For one, they're a lot faster. I also like the staring at the window as clouds and fields and cities go by. And I never have to take a turn at driving.

[I used to also love getting pretzels and snacks in the plane, but now they're so cheap, we only got sodas. I made up for that by buying a soft pretzel at the airport before we left.]

But enough of the boring stuff. I imagine I have enough pictures to make each day a separate post, or else I would be subjecting everyone to one super-duper long essay on the trip. And that's no fun for anyone.

We started our first day on a boat ride around the bay. Typical tourist stuff, it actually was included on this CityPass thing that we bought that was really handy. It was cool to go underneath the Golden Gate bridge, where I finally found out how was named for the name of the area and not, somehow, the color. I knew there was a logical explanation for that seeming contradiction!

Although , as we were passing under, the people in possession of my camera at that moment were sitting inside and didn't take a picture...I did, however, take pictures of the famous San Francisco sea lions.
But anyways, we touristed over to the Ghiradelli factory, where they sell you overpriced desserts [minus the free samples!] and let you look at a little chocolate making machine.

Then we had lunch at a cutesy 50's diner.
On our walk back over to the Aquarium [no one in possession of a map was trying to figure out public transportation at this point...], we went into a bunch of art galleries that had cool paintings by unknowns and tiny sketches by some of the most famous of my favorite painters. That was pretty nifty.

We walked the pirate route, apparently.
Then we went to the Aquarium! Woohoo! I love aquariums in general, but this one had a video of a giant octopus squeezing itself through a tube and into a giant beaker AND had an area where you could touch sting rays [well, they weren't sting rays, but they were basically sting rays with a different name].

This fish is as big as my sister. It was also stalking her through the tunnel.
Then we hiked some more through the hills and some trees to get to Coit Tower, which is apparently pretty famous. We didn't pay to go to the top, but there's a great view of the city just from the top of that hill. Instead of taking the easier route down, we waited 30 minutes for a bus and then finally had dinner at a sourdough bread bakery place which was super tasty. And very crowded. Also, I had a sip of my dad's beer cause it's totally legal now [!!!] and it was terrrrrible. So I'm totally justified in my decision to not drink during college because I would have just been making ugly faces every time I tried something.

It maybe is supposed to symbolize a firefighter's hose.
And then we finally headed back to our hotel to crash super late after this super sketchy guy told us to take this bus rather than the BART, which seems like it should be just like DART, except it's super expensive. So we tried the bus instead, and could have gotten off really near our hotel except we didn't know it, and got off at the airport to take yet another shuttle back to the hotel. Which was clearly unnecessary and took forever so we didn't do that again. More later on our adventures with San Fran public transport :)

I almost forgot we passed this place! Thank goodness for photographic evidence.

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