San Francisco

Warning! - This is a picture-heavy post. I'll try to keep the words to a minimum, so you can enjoy all of the pictures. They really say more than words do, anyway.

Dave's old marketing job offered incentives to marketers who met their goals for the year, and this year's incentive was a trip to San Francisco. So, even though he doesn't work as a marketer anymore, he still got to go because he met all of his goals. So, we got an all-expense-paid trip to San Francisco. It was the best trip ever. So relaxing, and so much fun to spend 4 days doing amazing things with Dave.

 Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf. Even though this is probably the most touristy thing in San Francisco, I still love it. 

 These seals are one of my very favorite things about the area. I could sit and watch them all day. It is so funny to see them flop around all over each other and make the funny noises they do to communicate. 

Dave found some surprisingly great geocaches right on Fisherman's Wharf. We had to be sneaky because there were so many muggles (non-geocaching folk around), but we managed to find them with nobody giving us a hard time.

Right as the sun was setting, we headed up to Coit Tower to try to get some cool sunset pictures. I'd say they turned out pretty good, don't you think?

After dinner (clam chowder in a bread bowl on the wharf - YUM!), we headed over to Ghiradelli Square to get our chocolate fill in. They give out free samples at the chocolate shops, so of course we went to both shops to get a free sample, and we waited until the free chocolate hander outers changed shifts, and went back again for more. We love chocolate!

We actually ended up here by accident. We were trying to take the bus to the Walt Disney Museum, and it was REALLY hard to find. We didn't mind this as a detour stop though, because the picture turned out so good.

It was really bright outside and hard to keep those eyes open!

 We finally found the Walt Disney Museum, and it was GREAT. If you didn't already know, we just LOVE anything that is Disney, so to have an entire museum dedicated to Walt was like a dream come true for us. Kind of like a pilgrimage.

See? Bright sun!

We couldn't take any pictures inside the official exhibit, which was a bummer, but we could take a picture of all of the academy awards that Walt Disney won for his movies. Dave especially loved the one in the middle with the 7 mini-oscars. If you couldn't guess, it is for Snow White and the 7 Dwarves.

After the museum while we were walking to the bus stop, we walked across this World War II building that Dave went nuts about. After Pearl Harbor, all of the naval operations in the pacific were moved to this building. Dave was kind of going crazy about it.

This building was such a mystery to us. It was this enormous, neo-classical looking structure. We found out that it was called the Palace of Fine Arts. I think they probably have performances and stuff inside the actual building, but where all of the pillars were, it was just beautiful grounds to walk around. Weird, but really pretty.

Does this look familiar to anyone? There is a replica of it in California Adventure at Disneyland. They've recently turned it into the Little Mermaid ride.

Dave's work treated us to a Giants game. I guess back in the day Dave was a huge Giants fan. I would never in a million years have guessed that now, and I still think it's weird that he liked them just because he's not really a sports guy now, but he really enjoyed the game.

I love him!

We biked across the Golden Gate Bridge and into Sausalito. It was by far my favorite thing we did on the trip. The scenery was beautiful, the air was great, and it was so cool to be biking across the ocean!

All of the bikes in Sausalito. Apparently lots of others had the same idea we did.

We bought lemonade from the CUTEST little kid that had a little stand. It was the best lemonade stand lemonade I've ever had. You know how it's usually watery and disgusting? Not here! We gave him an extra dollar just to be nice, but he sure didn't need it. When we saw him open his box, it almost couldn't close again with all of the bills he had in there! What a cute little entrepreneur! 

View of San Francisco from Sausalito

Sausalito

Another surprisingly great geocache. Dave was a lucky man this trip as far as geocaching was concerned!

Princess street. My favorite. 

YUMMY YUMMY YUMMY ice cream that we had while waiting for the ferry.

On our bike ride to Sausalito, we stopped at Fort Point, an old civil war fort that Dave of course looked up. It was actually pretty cool, and it was fun to walk around and check it out. 

They built the Golden Gate Bridge right over top of the fort! I'll bet not many people can say they have a picture of themselves UNDERNEATH the bridge!

Fort Point + Bridge + Exercise + Wife = Absolute happiness for Dave.

The Painted Ladies. These houses are featured on the opening credits of Full House. Aren't they cute? They look like little doll houses.

Haight Ashbury, the breeding grounds of the hippies and the "summer of love". 

I was getting a little bit nervous here....

Dave, of course, had to go check out Pier 45, where they had an World War II Submarine and a Liberty ship. I was doing some shopping while he was checking it out. :) I think I can just assume that wherever we go on a trip, Dave will find some sort of World War II history site for us to go visit.

We had the best time ever on our trip. It was so much fun to relax and spend time with Dave without having to worry about spending money! We've already been to San Francisco together once before, but we were very excited to go again. We just really love the place. I'm sure it's not the last time we will visit. The trip was perfect, and we felt so grateful to his company for treating us so well and for letting us have such a fun vacation.