Weekend in San Francisco!

Hi everyone!! I’m a little later getting this posted than I wanted… Can’t believe it is already Thursday (almost)!!! The week flew by!!!!!

Justin got a long weekend so we took advantage and went north to San Francisco!!

We left on Saturday and drove to Oakland first. We wanted to attend the Oakland temple, so we made sure and did that first. Such a beautiful temple (but aren’t they all??)! It is set literally at the highest point in Oakland up on the hillside overlooking all of Oakland and the entire San Francisco Bay. Very glad we went!! 

We got to drove across the Bay Bridge… super long… there are two levels to it also, the top level heads from Oakland to San Francisco, and the bottom level heads the other way. There was even a tunnel that goes through a small island. The craziest part with the tunnel was that there are still two levels to the bridge through the tunnel… wonder how many tunnels have two levels going through them!?!

We checked into our hotel…and got pretty lucky too! We decided to use hotwire to see how good of a rate we could get, so we found a good deal in the downtown San Fran area and took it! BUT… When we went to check in, they asked if we were just there on vacation or business. Justin told them that we just came up for the long weekend from Monterey where we live for military reasons. They decided to upgrade us to an executive room for free! It was on one of the highest floors of the building (one that the elevator wouldn’t go up to unless you had a room key that allowed you to go that high), and it had upgraded features and a nice view of the city! So we got a $450.00 room for under a fourth of the normal room rate! Pretty sweet right?!

After getting checked in we decided to go to dinner, while walking there we couldn’t believe how busy the city was. We went to San Francisco on our honeymoon, and it was busy, but not this busy…. Then we found out it was because San Fran was having a huge event for Service Members that weekend. There was gonna be an hour and 45 min wait at the Cheesecake Factory, so we decided to go elsewhere for dinner!

(I didn't take a pic of our "executive room," but wanted you all to see it so... This is a pic from the hotel website... ours was just like this pic, except we didn't have that fresh food served on the bed... oh well!)

The next day we had plans to go to the fisherman’s wharf and Alcatraz, we were driving there and found out they had closed all the roads even close to the wharf… all the roads even a half mile away or more were closed because it was so so busy! At that point we decided if it was this busy trying to get to the wharf… how busy would it be at the wharf itself! Since we went there on our honeymoon, we agreed it wasn’t worth trying to find parking and trying to deal with the crowds. So we headed south… but we still had fun for sure and got to get away from normal life for a bit. Before we got too far though, we were able to find m5 industries… where Mythbusters film!! We had hoped they would be out filming or something, but we weren’t so lucky! It was still a thrill seeing the sign!

As we made our way south we stopped for lunch… (This time we were able to find a Cheesecake Factory that was less crowded!!) At the mall that the restaurant was at, we also ran into the COOLEST store ever!!! At least in my opinion! Now if you knew me growing up, you knew how OBSESSED I was with Lego’s. For Lego’s alone, I wish I could go back to being ten years old!! Well, it was a Lego store!!! The best part… bulk Lego’s!! You could pick a size of jar and fill it up with individual Lego’s!! I would have saved every penny I had and spent it all on those individual Lego’s growing up! Justin told me I could get some if I wanted… but I only thought it would make me spend all my time dreaming up new Lego designs and buildings… better things to do with my time I guess! Hopefully one day, we will have a child that has the same love of Lego’s I do! Yep, I know I am pretty crazy!

Well, I think that is it for now!

We sure hope everything is going great for all of you!!