Yesterday we told you about the first part of our 3-day San Francisco vacation. Our next two days in the Fog City were packed with lots of great food and adventure, including one of the coolest experiences of our lives – biking across the Golden Gate Bridge. Here is how day two started:
Our morning began with a trip to Blue Bottle. I don’t want to exaggerate here at all, but this was the absolute best coffee shop experience we have ever had. Blue Bottle puts more care into their coffee than any shop we have ever seen. And it’s not just their coffee that is amazing, their food is incredible as well. We ordered lattes, poached eggs on toast, and yogurt with strawberries and pecan granola. If you ever go to San Francisco, this is the one place that you have to go to!
After breakfast we headed down towards Fisherman’s Wharf and rented a couple of bikes. Neither of us have really been on a bike since high school, so we were pretty intimidated to face the 8 mile ride up and down hills and across a bridge. It was a hard ride, but it was so, so worth it. Words can’t describe how awesome this was.
After making it across the bridge, we rode down into the little town of Sausalito. It’s hard to believe this town is in America! It looks just like a coastal town in the Mediterranean.
We grabbed some lunch at a little Italian cafe in Sausalito. This was really our one regret of the trip. There were so many places that looked great, but we settled on a restaurant that was just so-so. The pear and pecorino salad was great, but the pizza was something we could have made at home. The atmosphere was not great either. Oh well.
After lunch, we took the ferry back into San Francisco and we were able to get a great view of Alcatraz during the ride.
After the ferry ride, we rode one of San Francisco’s famous trolleys back to our hotel to get cleaned up for dinner. Originally we were planning on going to Tyler Florence’s restaurant, The Wayfare Tavern, but we weren’t in the mood for another heavy meal. So instead we headed to La Boulange bakery for some sandwiches. We got the club sandwich with chips and the BLT with quinoa salad. It was the perfect meal to end an amazing day!
For our last day in San Francisco, we decided to hit the typical tourist spots like Fisherman’s Wharf, Ghirardelli Square, and Lombard Street. After breakfast at the hotel, we took the subway over to the ferry building and started our walk up along the coast.
We grabbed an early lunch in the ferry building from Cowgirl Creamery and ordered a small cheese plate.
After that we made our way to Pier 39, which is tourist central, but for good reasons. So much to see!
The reason we ate a small lunch is so that we could fully enough this…
And enjoy it we did…
We decided to walk off some the burger and fries that we just pounded so we headed up to the crookedest street in America, Lombard street. This walk was a killer.
We headed back downtown and stopped at The Westin Hotel to take a ride up the glass elevators to get one last view of the city before leaving.
By this time we were worn out and ready for home, so we grabbed the red-eye flight back to Iowa and back to our kiddos. It was an amazing vacation, but nothing beats coming home to smiles and hugs from three little ones!
