I left my heart... in San Francisco

Traci and I have been planning a trip to California for about a year now. Since my family is huge and most members were unable to make the wedding in South Dakota, they did the next best thing and invited everyone to Paradise for a reception. Unfortunately, the only time that worked for everyone was about a year later. (I will write more about the reception later)

We left Kansas City on June 3rd headed for the West Coast. Our first day in San Francisco was supposed to start around 11am; however, due to fog, we did not get on the ground until about 2 that afternoon. A close friend of the family, Liz, offered to let us crash at her place and use her extra car. We are very appreciative for her helping us out.

Immediately after our plane landing, we started on our journey around the town that is known for its cable cars, buses, trolley's, boats rides, and heavy traffic. We quickly learned how to use BART and made our way to Liz's place in San Bruno.

Getting ready to board BART

So many places to go

We spent the first afternoon and night driving and walking around Fisherman's Wharf. For those of you who have never been there, it consists of restaurants, shops were you can buy trinkets, lots of boats and LOTS of interesting people to watch.

Fisherman's Wharf

The Golden Gate Bridge was screaming at us to come and check it out so we had no choice but to head that way. The fog had not yet burned off and the wind was howling as we made our way across this beautiful man-made creation. There were tons of people out that doing the same thing we were doing. We spent about an hour enjoying the views and then made our way back to Fisherman's Wharf to have dinner at Joe's Crab Shack.

Walking across the Golden Gate

The Golden Gate in the fog

Traci is a pretty good planner and had purchased tickets months ago for a tour of Alcatraz. So the next morning we woke up and made our way to Pier 33. Liz offered to drive us as she has years of city driving experience and would be able to get us downtown in the quickest manner. Mario Andriette has nothing on Liz in the city. She knew every shortcut imaginable and was bobbing and weaving through the stopped cars. We arrived at the pier in time to make our boat and in one piece.

We spent the next 4 hours or so walking around the tiny island of Alcatraz. It used to be a prison back in the day, a one time Native American Cultural Center and now it is a tourist attraction. I am sure many of you have seen the prison in film: "The Rock" or "Escape from Alcatraz". If you have not been there, I highly recommend setting some time aside and making the trip.

Alcatraz "The Rock"

The Main Entrance

Once we were back on the mainland, we made our way to some of the local beaches and cruised through a few of the local parks. Castro is a part of town that we had on our "to-do" list. There is not much to do here but walk around, check out the people and stare into some of the local shop windows. The Castro district has a high concentrate of gay people living, working and shopping and has been considered a gay district since the late 70's. Since we weren't there to eat or shop, we snapped some pictures walked up and down the road and then moved on to the next item on our list.

San Francisco's Castro District

If you ever want to get a great picture of the city and its surrounding area, I would recommend driving up to the top of Twin Peaks and checking out the view. The view is breathtaking and the only thing you can hear is the wind blowing.

The view from Twin Peaks

After making our way around both hilltops, we made our way to an area that was made famous by the 60s, drugs and the free spirit of those who frequented the area. We spent about an hour and a half walking the streets of Haight-Ashbury. This is a cross street that houses several head shops, smoking lounges and more interesting people wandering the streets.

The corner were it all happens

On our final morning, we headed to ChinaTown to see what it had to offer. If you are into LOTS of people milling about, fresh fruit, fresh poultry and digging through jade jewelry, then this is a place that you must visit. Everywhere on our trip, we had to pay something for parking. In most place we could park and pay 25 cents for 15 minutes or 2 hours of free parking. I think I emptied out all the change in my pocket to park for 45 minutes. The going rate of the meter that we parked at was 25 cents for 6 minutes. If you want to make some money, I would recommend going into the business of ripping of parking meters. You could probably retire after grabbing one or two of them.

China Town

Our San Francisco trip was incredible and we did so much. I could go on writing about some of the other things we experiences, but will save it. :-) You can view all of our pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/traciandbill

I will do my best to write about our experiences at our California reception in Paradise. It was perfect!!

Take care,

Bill and Traci