San Francisco, Final Destination

It's a long way from San Diego from San Francisco.  We drove I-5 North almost the whole way, which passes through many food farms.  Unfortunately, it also passed through dust bowl areas.  Saw a lot of political signs regarding water delivery crises.

In the middle of the desert, we stopped at Tita's Pupuseria.  Now that's legit mexican food!  These burritos were huge, and in this picture were already have eaten.  

Our 8 hour drive comes to a close, as we merge onto I-80 west, into San Francisco.  Because of the west coast sunset, the sign is hard to read.

Approaching the Bay Bridge, I-80 west.

Metro station, financial district, San Francisco.  Looks really clean, and was oddly empty.  So modern compared to NYC mass transit...  

**Actually, that's just an illusion of this picture.  This is actually a photo taken from the lobby of our hotel, looking directly up.  Those are elevator shafts, and the photo is hard to understand, the only way it looks correct is if you hold the photo over your head and look straight up at it.  I thought this was really cool.  Each floor of the hotel was a balcony view looking down to the lobby, which are the notches you see going up the wall.

This is the view of the financial district from our hotel - our hotel which was so bad ass, but I'll get to that at the end of this post, after we've cleaned the place up.  This downtown area is reminiscent of most cities, most familiarly to NYC's downtown area.

That night we boarded a streetcar from Market street.  This was one of the oldest cars, but the system was still fully functional.  We took this to Castro street, which is San Francisco's gay district.  It is the gay capital of the US, after all.

This view is out of the front of the streetcar.  The driver is directly behind that post.  Interestingly enough, many people just do not pay the fare to board streetcars and buses in San Francisco.  This rule is apparently not enforced very well.  The fare, for the system's paying riders, is $2.

From Castro street, this is the site of the camera store, which was opened by Harvey Milk.  Upstairs from this now clothing store is the apartment he was living in.

Although this picture cuts off the title, this is also a Human Rights Campaign office.

Memorials on the street outside this store.

Sunday, July 7th 2013.

Up and early to try to experience as much of the city as possible.  Below is the capital, also the site of Harvey Milk's assassination, along with the Mayor at the time.

The picture is slightly cloudy, but these are the buildings from the opening of Full House.

We drove up the hills, to the northern end of the peninsula, and reached a park, with an overlook of the Golden Gate Bridge.  

Further along the hills is another overlook, of all of San Francisco, atop the highest point.

We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge towards Sausalito.  The bridge is a $5 toll inbound to San Francisco, and they do not have any Cash tolls.  There is no stopping allowed on the bridge; all tolling is done electronically.  If you do not have their electronic toll system in your vehicle, they either bill by your license plate, or you can opt to pay the toll in advance online, which is what we did.  Over the bridge northbound, we enter this rainbow tunnel before arriving in Sausalito.

Sausalito is a cute, but pretty touristy stop.  It's directly on water, and is jam packed with shops, art galleries, and restaurants.  Most of these places seemed very pricey or upscale.  We stopped briefly in a small museum about the town.  I only took a few pictures.

I've never seen so many bikes parked in one place.

After this short tour, where we enjoyed a quick brunch, we headed towards Silicone valley, to see a few headquarters locations.

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Google Maps logo.

Google headquarters.

Apple campus.

Silicone valley is just under an hour south of the main land of San Francisco.  After these quick photo ops, we drove and saw the location where the Apple was invented (in the garage of Steve Jobs residence at that time), and also the house where Steve Jobs was living before he died.  To us New Jerseyans, the properties were modest, however many of them were beautiful.  Not nearly as gaudy as the mansions you would see in the NYC tri-state, though a lot of them certainly held the same multi-million price tag.

Back to San Fran, downtown.  Seen below is a streetcar.

On our way to the Fisherman's Wharf, we stopped at the transit museum, which is literally as big as it looks in this picture.  It showed the history of the streetcars.

The inside of a streetcar, from where the driver sits.

We attempted to catch the train to continue towards the wharf.

Since we didn't catch the train, we walked.  I was able to catch the above photo of the Bay Bridge, I-80, and then we stopped at Pier 23 restaurant, which we recognized from an episode of Diners Drive-ins and Dives.

The San Francisco Bay Area is significantly colder than surrounding areas.  The highest temperature we experienced around here was 65 degrees.  We caught the weather report later that night, and noticed how different the temperatures are depending on your location.  The hottest day of the week, they mentioned, would have a high of 65 in the Bay Area, although inland it would be 92 degrees.  We noticed this when we were in the Silicone Valley area, where it was between 75-80.

Anyways, the point of that rant was that it was below 60 degrees after dinner, so we ended up heading back by the hotel.  Below is the view from the street into the Macy's downtown.

Later that night we drove around other neighborhoods in San Fran.  Unfortunately the night pictures don't really capture the view.  The streets climb very steep in some areas, and when you are at the top looking down, the view is awesome!

We drove around this neighborhood, Pacific Heights, and also stopped to see the house where they lived in Mrs. Doubtfire, 2460 Steiner Street.  That photo didn't come out at all.

Monday, July 8th 2013.

I can't believe it's coming to an end.  As we're packing up at our hotel, I remembered I needed to capture this bad-ass hotel room we were staying at in San Francisco.  

The entry way.

The living room

Hall to the bathroom.

Bathroom with full tub and separate glass standing shower (seen in the mirror).  We stayed here for free using hotel points, but the total cost of this hotel for 2 nights (if we had paid) would've been almost as much as the entire trip.  Crazy!  The attitude of some of the guests staying there was telling...  Pretentious I suppose.

We're sitting at the airport now, as I reflect back on our adventure.  An adventure is the best way to describe it, as a vacation leads your imagination to the wrong mindset.  We both thoroughly enjoyed this experience.  Our country is amazing! Living around Manhattan, one does not even have a glimpse of the beauty and wonder that is the land of the free.  New York may be the greatest city in the world, but that's a very narrow-sighted opinion of what is "great".  I wouldn't trade this experience for anything, and I honestly can't wait to do it again!  We obviously still have so much to see, and so many nice people to meet.  It is amazing, the cantor of people in middle and west America.  From stopping for coffee in little Topeka Kansas, to asking a waitress way too many questions in Louisville Kentucky, and even in Salt Lake City, what I must believe is the most judgmental city in the world, there are countless nice people out there that you have never met.  Our biggest surprise on this trip was and still is the state of Colorado, and the city of Denver (separately and together), where I believe everyone must see at least once.  San Francisco was nice, and also thoroughly enjoyable, but I believe we have seen it for what it is in one trip.

A road trip of this distance and time is something of a finding yourself type of experience.  One I can only recommend committing to with someone you are truly comfortable being with.  Emotions can sometimes get the best of you, but that is all part of the journey.  I truly cannot wait until I can do this again.  It's true they say that the world is a small place.  Truer still is how naive that statement can be.  I'm reminded of a graduation gift, the story titled "Oh the places you'll go".  So right.