San Francisco: Monterey

Our last few days in California were spent down in the Monterey/Gilroy area. One of my college friends was getting married and I was so excited to join her on her special day!

We drove down to Gilroy, where our hotel for the weekend was located. It was about an hour and a half from the airport and the drive was really lovely.

Our first night, we mainly just checked out Gilroy and ate dinner at In-n-Out (yeah, that's a total of 3, or err... maybe 4 times, who's counting?). The next morning, bright and early, we headed out to Monterey. We had a few hours to kill before the wedding and I really wanted to see the town.

It was a 45 minute drive from our hotel and we saw some interesting things along the way including the artichoke capital of the world and a little Carly Rae Jepsen sand writing (Call Me MYBE?).

Not gonna lie, parking in Monterey was a nightmare. It's SUPER expensive and hard to find. Eventually, we found a spot in some lot that cost us a fortune. Live and learn. After parking, we kind of just wandered around. Our first stop was to see the harbor seals, who definitely had the right idea about chilling on the beach on this gorgeous day.

We headed over towards the main drag and walked by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I was kind of bummed that Adam didn't really want to go check it out and we really didn't have all that much time. I probably should have gone anyway, I've heard such awesome things about it. Those little can labels were all over the town incased in the cement. I think I saw about 4-5 different ones.

Cannery Row, down the road from the aquarium, was basically just a bunch of knick-knack touristy shops and restaurants, but it had a lovely view from the little park area. We had lunch at the Cannery Row Brewing Company.

We really didn't do too much in Monterey, since we had to head back to the hotel before the wedding to get dressed and pick up another friend from college to drive together. The wedding was at this gorgeous ranch near Gilroy. The whole thing was exactly how I imagined a California wedding would be.

We nabbed the bride so that the four alumnae, Lauren, Almut, Me, and Katie, could pose for a picture with her! And yes, it was soooo hot out that day - we were melting. I looked like a hot mess. I have no idea how Almut (the bride) looked so amazing still (share your secrets girl!)!

Adam and I had great table mates and I had really lovely time catching up and meeting Katie and her fiance (we somehow didn't meet in college).

How amazing is that view? California has some of the best sunsets for sure!

On our way back, we stopped at the Apple Campus in Cupertino. Adam had visited for his interview just a few days before and he wanted to show me what the place looked like. It's like a small city. Adam got to travel back there again last month for his first day of work.

We stopped at this place called "The Melt" in Stanford for lunch. It kind of made me laugh that California has a restaurant called Melt and Cleveland has a restaurant with the same name, but they're so different from one another. One is very obviously healthy and the other is, er, not. both are so good though. I had a delicious apple and brie grilled cheese.

Right next to Melt, was Sprinkles Cupcakes. We've been wanting to try this cupcake place since we've been on our cupcake crusade. We said the passcode of the day to get our free cupcake (chocolate peanut butter) and we bought a key lime and a red velvet. The chocolate peanut butter were SO good. I think it was because they had a lot of frosting on them, which the key lime and red velvet were lacking. I like my frosting. It was a good ending to our trip to Northern California.

The next day we headed home. Stay tuned for my trip to Pittsburgh and visit with Adam!

San Francisco: Alcatraz

On our last full day in San Francisco before we headed down South for a friend's wedding, we decided to visit Alcatraz. I mentioned in this post that we had purchased our City Passes directly from the Alcatraz Cruises landing and had booked our trip for this day. If you want to do the same, be sure to book a few days in advance. We thought we might be able to get on an earlier tour, but they had no availabilities until 4 days later.

You take their boat out to the island and then they huddle you together to go over some ground rules and interesting tidbits about the island. That day, there happened an author who wrote a book about Alcatraz on the island, so we had to stand and listen to some historical things as well.

Once they tell you you're free to move about the island, you walk up this long, winding path to the top of the hill where the entrance to the main prison is located. Once inside, you get a headset that will guide you on your tour inside the prison.

There are signs along the way that have historical figures on them, like guys who attempted escape.

One of the last places you visit inside the prison, before heading outside is the kitchen. Apparently there were some stabbings that happened in there. Gee, why is that not hard to believe? Outside, we saw a fighter jet fly by.

After we finished with the tour, Adam and I went back around to the recreation yard. Adam felt he needed some exercise (snort). You can exit from the wall of the recreation yard down to the garden area. This is my favorite part of the whole place. It's beautifully kept and has so many gorgeous plants. Who knew Alcatraz was actually this lovely?

There are really great views of the bay from this area as well as lots of nesting birds.

Before we took the long road back down to the boat, Adam made a panorama on my iPhone. Like I said, really great views!

I definitely recommend visiting the Rock. I'm not guaranteeing you'll meet Nick Cage or Sean Connery though.

San Francisco: Fun Filled Day

I wanted to bring Adam to Golden Gate Park, because he had never had the pleasure of visiting any of the last trips that we took to San Fran. I feel like visiting the Golden Gate Park is a must do when you're in the city.

We started our day at the California Academy of Sciences. A nerd's paradise.

We headed straight for the Earthquake exhibit. They built a model home to replicate what it felt like to be in both the 1906 and the 1989 earthquakes. I've always been terrified of the thought of earthquakes. I remember when I was little and we had an earthquake at our house in New Jersey and it freaked me out. Then last year we had our fair share of natural disasters in the Northeast, including the Virginia earthquake, which somehow made it's way up here. Now granted, neither of those earthquakes were all that strong, so I was curious to know what a strong earthquake would feel like especially since at the time we were considering a move to Northern California. Yup, definitely how I expected. I'll take a nor'easter over an earthquake any day, thankyouverymuch.

After the earthquake, we headed over to check out the baby ostrich exhibit. According to the Academy, ostriches are connected to earthquakes. From what I understand it has to do with the movement of the plates, since their closest ancestors are located in South America. Anyway, the ostriches were wicked adorable.

We took the elevator upstairs to the living roof, which is beyond amazing. They have this super complicated system of drainage to keep plants native to the area growing on the roof. It's so gorgeous and so is the view. The building across from the Cal Academy of Sciences is the de Young Museum, which has a great view of the city from it's tower room.

We headed back downstairs to visit the rainforest. This was the only exhibit that was closed for refurbishment the last time I visited and it was probably the one thing I wanted to see the most. As you walk up the spiral path, you head into different parts of the canopy, which have different animals and plants. Once you reach the top, it's just amazing. There are birds and butterflies flying everywhere.

After we finished up at the Academy of Sciences, we walked over to the de Young museum, which was also included on our City Pass. Adam's not really an art museum kind of guy, but he let me walk around in a few exhibits. We mainly wanted to see the view from the top of the tower. You can really see a lot of San Francisco from up there.

The last place we visited before leaving Golden Gate Park was the Conservatory of Flowers. I really enjoyed my visit last year when they had a "Wicked Plants" exhibit that featured poisonous plants from all over the world. This year was a prehistoric plant exhibit complete with dinosaurs.

I love Golden Gate Park and wish we could have spent more time there visiting the waterfalls and the bison, but it was getting hot out and we were getting tired from all the walking. It's definitely a lot of walking. :)

San Francisco: Day Two

On our second day, we kind of wanted to take things in stride and just walk around again. We're not huge planners if you're seeing a trend here. Adam wanted to keep an eye on the keynote from WWDC, so he stayed at the hotel and I walked around a little down towards Yerba Buena Gardens and past the WWDC line (which was still around the block 10 minutes after the keynote started).

After the keynote was over, I came back to the hotel and grabbed Adam to head out for the day. We looked the day before and found that Adam's favorite food truck, Curry Up Now was down the road on Bush St. for lunch so we walked over and got some sexy fries and a chicken tikka masala burrito for lunch. I promise you, the sexy fries are much more delicious than they look. They're waffle cut sweet potato fries topped with chicken tikka masala. You can't go wrong, unless you don't like Indian food.

After lunch, we climbed the hill to the closest cable car stop (two blocks away) so we didn't have to climb one of the largest hills in San Francisco to get to the top of Nob Hill and the Fairmont Hotel.

I forgot to mention in my last post that we had purchased City Passes at the Alcatraz Cruises landing on Pier 33. I bought the City Pass the year before when I tagged along with Adam to San Fran and while he was attending WWDC, I was living it up and touring the city. For around $70 you get admission to many of the big attractions in San Fran: Cal Academy of Sciences, DeYoung Museum or the Exploratorium, SF MoMA, and Aquarium of the Bay. If you purchase the pass at the Alcatraz Cruises pier, you get a trip to Alcatraz included in the fee. If you purchase it elsewhere, you get a tour of the bay on the Blue & Gold Fleet, but don't get to set foot on Alcatraz. Trust me, it's worth the trip to Pier 33 to pick up your pass, Alcatraz was probably my favorite part of the whole package (well, that and the Cal Academy of Sciences, be still my nerdy heart).

The nice thing about the City Pass is that it gives you a 7 day unlimited MUNI/Cable Car pass. The Cable Car passes alone run you around six bucks a ride (that's one way!) or around 14 bucks for an unlimited day pass. I know that locals think the Cable Cars are touristy and few people ride them, but I've found that they're helpful to get down to the piers and they're fun. Since I am a tourist, I might as well get the most out of it.

I was itching to show Adam the Fairmont Hotel since I stayed there and attended a conference last October with my lab mate, Kate. The place is pretty amazing and has so much history. Like the Ferry Building, it survived the earthquake of 1906, but it was severely damaged after the fires that followed the earthquake ripped through it. I feel the need to mention that the closet in our room was about 6-feet wide. We found out that it was because it was designed to hold the large trunks that were traveling staples back in the early 1900's. Girl's got to have her clothes.

This was our view from our room the night we arrived and our view at sunrise the morning after. Isn't it amazing?

It's way too expensive for our poor grad student salaries to stay there normally (we got a great rate when we attended the conference), but I wanted to show Adam the views from the beautiful rooftop garden. Maybe some day we'll get to stay there. Our room was the third one up and to the left of the balcony in the photo below.

We decided to walk the rest of the way down to the bay, since it was all downhill. We happened to walk by the Cable Car Museum and figured we'd stop since we were passing it anyway. They always announce it on the Cable Car when they stop there and it's free admission. It was actually pretty fascinating to see how the cables work and to see the historic cars they had on display. Things sure have changed from when the cars were first introduced.

We figured we could treat ourselves to a cupcake for walking all the way down to the water, so we stopped in Ghirardelli Square. I thought these little birds splashing around in the fountain were adorable. After our stop we wanted to walk down to Municipal Pier that circles the aquatic park cove.

We've never walked this pier before and it was probably a good thing we avoided it. Between the Segway tours that were speeding up and down it (seriously, the Segway guide basically said to the tour, "Have at it.") and the wind that made it feel like we were being forced backwards/forwards/sidewards I don't think I'd walk this again. It does give lovely views of the Golden Gate bridge and the city though.

I got photobombed by a seagull while trying to take a picture of the city with my phone. This might be my favorite shot of the whole trip. It's been my phone home screen since I took it.

We stopped at the Maritime Museum on our walk back. I had been inside the museum before, but hadn't seen their large maritime exhibit "A Walk Along the Waterfront". It oddly reminded me of an exhibit in Disney, even the musty smell was familiar (weird, I know). We sat and watched the video that described the history of boats in the San Francisco bay and walked around and looked at the other historical information they had to offer. Did you know that there are a whole bunch of old ships buried under buildings in San Francisco? No? Well now you do! The guy floating in a life saver from the ceiling kind of cracked us up. Not sure what he was doing up there?

By the time we left the museum, it was getting pretty late and we were ready for dinner, since we had probably walked a few miles at that point. I don't even remember where we ate that night. It could have been In-N-Out. I wouldn't be surprised if it was, would you? :)

Next up: Cal Academy of Sciences!

San Francisco: Our First Full Day!

We had a few reasons that we booked our trip in June during what was probably one of the busiest weeks in San Francisco. The first reason was that my very first friend from college was getting married about an hour outside of San Francisco in mid-June and I really wanted to attend her wedding. We both happened to have January admission to the college we attended (there were only about 30 of us in this admission class), we lived in the same dorm and had a lot of the same classes together. We lost touch a bit after college (what can I say, things get crazy when you leave school!), but we've been fortunate to reconnect a few times over the last two years in San Francisco where she had been living and I was visiting.

Adam and I have been to San Francisco three years in a row now. Adam attended Apple's WWDC (World Wide Developers Conference) the first two years we visited, but unfortunately he wasn't able to get a ticket this year. We decided to go to San Fran during the same week as the conference anyway and Adam agreed to take a real vacation and tour the city this time. I was pretty stoked since he hadn't had the time the last two years and I had so many things I wanted to show him.

We got an early head start out of our hotel (the only nice thing about jet lag from the East coast) and decided to walk the Embarcadero to Fisherman's Wharf to grab some In-N-Out burgers for lunch. We figured if we walked the whole way there we wouldn't feel guilty about eating those delicious burgers and maybe some cupcakes after.

We walked down Bush St., the street that our hotel was on, and headed over to Market St. to catch up with the Embarcadero at the Ferry Building. I had actually never been this way before, but Adam had on his first trip to San Fran three years ago. The Ferry Building was built in 1898 and survived the earthquakes of 1906 and 1989. It's amazing to think that 100 years ago they could build something so solid.

The walk from the ferry building down the Embarcadero was a nice one. It was breezy and lovely out that morning (although when is San Francisco not lovely?). From the Embarcadero you can see few of the cities landmarks like, Coit Tower and Treasure Island, which was home to the 1939-1940 World's Fair.

It was a leisurely 45 minute walk to get to In-N-Out burger from the Ferry Building and we got there just after they opened at 10:30 AM. It's kind of become a tradition that when we visit the West Coast, we stop at In-N-Out as soon as we arrive. It's kind of become a running joke with my family and we even got In-N-Out t-shirts as a wedding gift from my family in California (Thanks Aunt Sharon, Uncle Brian, and Kira!).

After lunch, we trekked up the hill to Ghirardelli Square to grab some Kara's Cupcakes (our favorite!!) to bring back to the hotel for our late night snack. They have THE BEST s'mores cupcake e-ver. I have dreams of the fluffy marshmallow pillow topping and the graham cracker crust. Adam went with a strawberry cream cupcake, which was their seasonal special. We also picked up a red velvet and a peanut butter milk chocolate ganache for later.

Speaking of cupcakes, after we had checked in the previous night, we headed out to Bristol Farms on Market Street to grab some drinks and dinner. On our way over we passed a cupcake stand that we hadn't seen before called Cako. We decided to check out what they had to offer and ended up bringing two cupcakes, a snickerdoodle and a maple bacon back with us. I liked the snickerdoodle cake it was all yummy and cinnamon-y. Adam really enjoyed the maple bacon one, but he likes the one from our local cupcake joint, Kayce Cupcakes best. ;)

Ok, so back to business. We kind of felt disgusting after eating a burger, fries and a cupcake, so we decided to walk back to our hotel via the Embarcadero so we could check out the Ferry Building Marketplace on the way back.

On the way we saw a blimp, which was sponsored by some vodka company, flying overhead. Since we were kind of walking slower than before, I was having fun looking at all the different styles of the piers. This one in particular, Pier 17, was home to a chocolate company and was my favorite. I was crushing hard on those huge wooden doors. Gorgeous.

We finally made it to the Ferry Building and decided to walk around inside a bit to check out what it had to offer. There was everything from restaurants to pottery to mushrooms. Yes, there was a store dedicated to fungus.

After we felt that we had seen enough, we headed back to the hotel to relax a bit before dinner. We were going to walk down to the Ferry Building for dinner, but about twenty feet from our hotel, I saw a sign for The Irish Bank restaurant, looked down at my aching-still-not-recovered feet, stopped to check reviews on Foursquare and told Adam, this was where we were eating dinner.

And it was good. I had a Boddingtons and shepherd's pie, by recommendation of a few people on Foursquare. I don't even remember what Adam had, but both he and I scarfed our dinner down quickly and were satisfied.

It was definitely a fun first day! Be sure to stay tuned for our trip recaps to Golden Gate Park and Alcatraz!