San Francisco

On the wishlist for San Francisco was Pier 39, the Sourdough Bread Company, Lombard Street, the Ghiradelli Ice Cream shop and Golden Gate Bridge. 

We headed over to Lombard Street first. The kids weren't as impressed as we thought they would be. There were tons of tourists out so we couldn't even stop and take pictures. 

After finding reasonably priced all day parking we walked over to the pier. We wandered around all the shops, finding souveniers for the kids. A couple years ago we had started getting James little snow globes of places we had been. The girls wanted to start collections as well. Avery decided to collect spoons and Briella - keychains. It took them forever to find ones that they liked. We happened to stumble across a store called Leftys. They sold a bunch of gadgets/school supplies, etc. for left handed people. I never knew a place like this existed! Briella is left-handed and it never occurred to me how simple things for us would be a challenge for her. We loaded up on scissors, special pencils and notebooks (with the spirals on the opposite side). She was thrilled that there were options out there for her, and thankfully they have an online store!

We walked to the end of the pier and saw the sea lions and Alcatraz. 

We found this museum of old arcade games. Most of them were totally creepy. But it was pretty cool to see what people in the late 1800s came up with for entertainment!

 

We started walking towards the Sourdough Bread Company to do the tour and eat lunch there. Unfortunately the kids spotted a different restaurant right across the street that they wanted to eat at instead. Ben had his heart set on getting a sourdough sandwich so he went over there and I took the kids to the Rainforest Cafe. Unfortunately Ben didn't even really like his sandwich!

We walked over to the Ghiradelli Chocolate Shop and got some things to share. We were all in heaven. Ben headed back to get the car while the kids and I finished up. 

Then we drove towards Golden Gate Bridge. It got crazy foggy, we could barely see it!

The fog rolling in was beautiful.

It was also insanely windy.

We jumped in the car and headed towards our hotel near the Redwood Forest.