This is quite late, but Josh and I were in CA for 10 days a couple weeks ago. We had such a great time! Just a heads up, this is going to be a long post.
We drove down to NC so that we could fly out of Raleigh since we would be going there for Thanksgiving right after we got back from CA anyway. Anna and John were nice enough to keep Bailey for us while we were away, so I felt better knowing she was going to be with her best friend while we were away.
We flew out of Raleigh Saturday morning. We had a VERY short layover in Denver...just 35 minutes. Luckily, our gates were side by side. We literally hopped off one plane and got on the next. Once we landed in San Francisco, we realized Josh didn't have his license. NOT a good thing! We looked EVERYWHERE and we just didn't have it. Luckily, Josh remembered that the plane we were on was going to San Jose after Denver. He called Southwest and it didn't take long at all for us to find out that it was in San Jose. Luckily, that's less than an hour away from where we were. Whew! We decided we would go pick it up that night.
Beautiful!
This is the shadow from our plan taking off in Denver.
The salt flats flying into San Francisco.
We went to pick up our rental car after getting our luggage. We had reserved a full size sedan, but we were offered a 2014 Mustang for $8 more. Sure, why not!
She's pretty, even in white!
We had plans to meet up with our friend, Nick at his brewery! We took a look around, sampled his beers, watched some football and just caught up. We had such a great time! After hanging out for a bit, we went to dinner with Nick, his wife and his daughter. They introduced us to Afghan food at Kabul and it was delicious!
Outside Armstrong Brewing CO.!
Some beers Nick has aging.
The new bottling line!
Josh and I with Savannah. We haven't seen this little lady since she was about 4!
We had a great time with the Armstrongs! We definitely want to get out to visit again before too long. Nick has plans to move his brewery into a larger space, so we really want to go see it!
Sunday morning, we drove down to pick up Josh's license from the San Jose airport. This seemed kind of silly since we were going to San Jose that night anyway, but we were going to have to have Josh's license to pick up the rental car we were getting for work. After picking up his license, we drove north of San Francisco to Muir Woods to see the redwoods.
Our first time going over the Golden Gate Bridge!
Look at how old this tree was!
SO tall!
I've heard about how big Redwoods and Giant Sequoias were for as long as I can remember, but I was still amazed at how huge they really are!
Massive! This thing is bigger around than my master bathroom!
The view leaving Muir Woods, so pretty!
There was a small brewpub close by, so we decided to stop by for a beer.
We enjoyed our beers here, but we didn't eat here because we were planning to grab lunch in Sausalito.
We got to Sausalito and just picked a place to eat. We didn't have a lot of time before the car needed to be dropped off, so we didn't have time to do any research. We ended up going to Taste of Rome. As it turns out, it gets really good reviews. I wasn't very impressed with my meal.
I got spaghetti with clams. I expected amazing homemade sauce. I didn't care for the sauce or the garlic bread. I'm a fan of garlic, and it was even too much garlic for me!
Josh got some kind of gnocchi. I don't remember what all was in it, but his was really good!
After lunch, we returned the car and picked up our next rental car. This is where the "work" part of our trip started. We drove down to San Jose, which is where we were both taking a class.
This is where we spent the next 5 night. Cute room!
We actually didn't have much time to do anything in San Jose. We mostly went to class and went out to dinner. We even had dinner in our room a couple nights. We were still on East Coast time, so we got tired super early.
We tried In-N-Out Burger. The food was fine, but not very impressive. The shakes were delicious though!
We had a couple days of rain, then we went to downtown San Jose on our next clear day.
A double rainbow! We could actually see the entire rainbow (just the smaller one)! I wasn't able to get a picture of the whole thing, because Josh was driving down the road when I took this one.
Toilets on the street.
Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph. We weren't able to go in, but it was beautiful!
Levi's Stadium, the new 49ers stadium under construction in Santa Clara. This will be the site of Superbowl L. This was just around the corner of where Josh took his class. Very cool!
After our class, we went to check into our hotel in San Francisco. I was SO excited to go back to San Francisco. There was so much I was looking forward to doing! Josh found our hotel on Priceline and we got a great deal. We stayed at Chancellor Hotel in Union Square. This was actually our favorite hotel we stayed at the entire trip. It's very old and still family owned. Not something you see a ton. It's also very close to so much!
Pictures of the hotel being built.
Clocks with different time zones.
They had a 13th floor! We were on the 4th though.
So cute. We left the ducky behind and later realized Bailey would have really enjoyed it. Oh well.
Super cute and super comfy.
They had an amazing pillow menu! I was so excited about this :-). I ordered the magnetic pillow and Josh ordered the buckwheat pillow. I used one each night. Josh ended up just using the regular pillows, which were also very comfy.
Cute little seating area we didn't really use. I love the green chairs though!
This was our view outside our window! We could hear the cables from the cable cars running underneath the streets. So cool!
Hearts in Union Square
A street performer. He made really cool robot sounds with his mouth.
We saw puppies training to be therapy and guide dogs. There was a group of about 20 of them. So cool!
There were normal stores in really old, beautiful buildings!
Walking up Lombard street. This was a VERY steep hike!
At the top of Lombard!
We decided to walk back down to the bay rather than waiting for the cable car.
I'm glad we did. We found this Norwegian church with this beautiful view!
An electric BMW
Ghiradelli Square!
Yummy sundae! It was very good, but to be honest, I would have been just as excited with a Ben & Jerry's sundae. It was cool to see where Ghiradelli started, but since there was no tour or anything, this is probably part of the trip I would skip if we could go back and re-do it. It's just a very touristy area and there are other things we didn't get to do that we would prefer.
We saw some cool things while searching for the sea lions!
A 2 story carousel. Are you serious?!?
We found the sea lions! They were so funny!
The Painted Ladies! So pretty and such a nice view of the city!
This is the Full House house! You would think by the show that it's close to the Painted Ladies (or that it is one of them!) and the Golden Gate Bridge. It's not close to any of those things! It also looks very different. It's purple now, and no more red door. Obviously, the owners don't like to be bothered.
Apparently, these are really cool in San Francisco.
The Oakland Bridge. So pretty at night!
A historic streetcar. We rode these a couple times. They are the original ones from way back in the day. Pretty cool!
Look at all that sourdough bread! Yum!
So many cool shapes!
Last ride on the cable car!
Windmills and flowers in Golden Gate Park. So pretty!
We decided to visit the Pacific. Josh has never put his feet in it and I hadn't in the US. It was COLD!
...but I found out there were lots of sand dollars and I didn't care, I had to find some! It was worth it, I found 3 whole ones :-).
Next...we made out way to wine country!
We went to a couple wineries and had a nice lunch in Sonoma, then we went to our hotel room in Napa.
We found this really cool dessert bar, Sift. They had delicious cupcakes! I got the Battle Royale. It was delicious! I didn't know it until I just looked up their menu to find it, but it was a Cupcake Wars winner!
Wine grapes!
Josh is standing in front of an olive grove.
Brand new wine barrels.
Wine Country was lots of fun, but quite expensive. The wines are undoubtedly better than the ones we make on the East Coast and it was absolutely beautiful! We have been able to find several of the wines that we tried and liked at Total Wine here. You would think it would be cheaper to get it from the source, but that's not the case. I guess they upcharge it so much because it's such a popular place to go and they can.
Just before going over the Golden Gate Bridge for the last time.
With my favorite person in the world!
Almost time to say goodbye to Cabernet!
We went on to the airport and began our really long trip back to Raleigh. Our flight left a 1:40 and we just had a short layover in Atlanta. Unfortunately, 45 minutes turned into over 3 hours. It was after 2:30 am when we landed in Raleigh. Whew! That was a long day of traveling!
