Sisters in San Fran

I had a fantastic weekend. My sister flew down from Seattle on Thursday night so we had 2 and a half days to have fun in San Francisco. We were quite productive!

On Friday, after Katie had shopped downtown for the day while I was at work, we went out for the night in Jack London Square. We had dinner and drinks at a great restaurant called Bocanova. Then on Saturday we got up and took the ferry into downtown. I had never taken the ferry before but it was pretty nice! It's just a 30 minute ride to the Ferry Building, so the commute isn't that much longer than what it takes for me to ride BART. Unfortunately though, it's twice as expensive. So the boat dropped us off at the Ferry Building where the Farmer's Market was going on. This farmer's market is like the mecca on Saturdays in the city. It was so crowded! But there's also tons of vendors so you can pretty much find anything you want, and more. We started off with breakfast, a doughnut muffin and apricot jam pocket. Side note: guess what Pioneer Woman's recipe was for today? Muffins That Taste Like Doughnuts..mmm. At the market we stocked up on all sorts of picnic supplies and then headed off to Golden Gate Park.

Just outside of GG Park, we rented bikes (the park is waaay too big to walk around). So we biked into the park and found a place close to all the museums to have a picnic! Here's our masterpiece of a picnic lunch, complete with sourdough and rosemary herb bread, gruyere and chevre cheeses, proscuitto, wild arugula lettuce, a peach, almonds, olives, dark chocolate, and a travel container of Chardonnay. Best lunch ever! Also, check out the Michigan beach towel/picnic blanket. Go Blue! After eating and people watching for awhile, we headed over to the de Young Museum, a pretty new art museum at the park. Part of the building is a 9-story tower that's free to access and has beautiful views of the city, so we headed up to take a look. Here are some of the pictures from atop the tower:


Needing to burn off some of the calories from lunch, we continued to bike around the park for an hour and then turned in our rentals. We walked over to Alamo Square, home to the Painted Ladies, which might be familiar from the Full House opening credits.


It was time to make our way back to Oakland to get cleaned up for dinner! That night we headed back down to the Mission district where we met Jordan's friend, fraternity brother, and fellow Rochester native Andy and his girlfriend for dinner and sangria. We went to a tapas restaurant and ordered the meat platter, which is literally what it sounds like. I think I ate more meat than night then I usually do in a two weeks, but it was so good! Afterwards we headed over to a bar in the mission to meet up with one of Katie's Clemson/Seattle friends for a bit before we had to catch BART back to Oakland! That's one of the few unfortunate things about BART - that it doesn't run past midnight so you pretty much have to fend for yourself and cab it if you end up staying in the city past then.

Sunday was even more adventurous than Saturday. I drove over not one, not two, but three Bay Area bridges, including the Golden Gate bridge. It might not sound all that impressive to you, but I had been terrified all summer to even attempt to drive into the city. Good thing we were just passing through on our way up to Muir Woods, a national park about 15 minutes north of San Francisco. It's one of the few places in the Bay Area that has the giant redwood trees. It was beautiful! Katie and I even did a little bit of strenuous hiking in the park around Muir Woods. I'm still sore today! We made it up to the Panoramic Trail where you supposedly can see the ocean. We weren't that lucky. Look at the view though!


After about 2 and half hours at Muir Woods, we hopped in the car and headed back to Oakland where I dropped Katie off at the airport. Then I pigged out on all the leftover picnic supplies, including the bar of chocolate. It was a great weekend.