Girls San Francisco Trip

Well, I got back Sunday night from our trip with my sisters and mom, and it was great. We had a wonderful time, and I wanted to write all about it. Beware, it is a long post, so feel free to scan through it fast, or just look at the pictures. I just wanted to write about everything we did, so I wouldn't forget. Here goes...... We all flew in Thursday night, and met up at the Sacramento temple to do a session. My mom had brought with her the names for my dad's grandma, and his aunts, who have passed on, so we got to go do their temple work for them. It was very neat, and good to be in the temple with my family!!

The next morning, we headed out to San Francisco....

We stopped in Fairfield at the Jelly Belly factory. It was a great tour, and I highly recommend it to anyone, especially with kids.

Our favorite part was the sample bar. They had every kind of candy they make for you to try. Our favorite was the chocolate covered macadamia nuts. I also tried the famous "bertie botts". I tried the pickle flavor, which I had to spit out, and then the grass flavor, which wasn't very good either, but tolerable. Definitely stick to the normal flavored jelly bellies....(the new pomegranate is fantastic!!)

We checked into our hotel, and headed off to China town for some shopping....

Trying on hats is a must when you're in China town. Dave told me he liked this hat, and that I should have bought it. I'm not a big hat fan, so I knew I wouldn't get any good "practical" use out of it.

Ok, I don't know what face I was trying to do in this picture, but I figured since I was in China town, I had to try on the Chinese hat. The funny thing is, after taking this picture, we walked down the street a little more, and found this sign in front of their hats.....

We got a good laugh out of this sign, since just one minute before I had just taken the previous picture. I guess they have lots of tourists wanting to do this, and thought they should be able to get some money from it. It was pretty funny......

Well, as you know, it was a girls trip. But my sister Tammy's baby is only 3 months old, so he got to come along. He was soooo good on the trip, you hardly knew he was even there. It was fun having him. We got tons of cute pictures of him, but this one was one of my favorites. We even found the sign with his correct spelling!!!! He is such a cutie!!!

That evening, while we were out by the pier, it started to sprinkle. It was a heavy sprinkle, so my mom bought these very fashionable rain parkas at a souvenier shop for us to wear while we walked to dinner.

After dinner at a yummy resteraunt on the pier, we walked over to Ghirardelli square for dessert. My mom and I shared the butterscotch fudge sundae. It was delicious!!

The next morning, we got up and took the street car over to Pier 33 to try and get Alcatraz tickets. It was all sold out for the weekend. We had wondered if we should get the tickets ahead of time, but figured we'd be ok. We weren't ok. No tickets left. Oh well, maybe next time. So this was how we got to experience Alcatraz, in front of a billboard.

Since we couldn't do Alcatraz, we noticed a big farmers market by the Ferry Building, so we headed down the street to that. I'm so glad we went, it was so fun!!! The market was huge, with tons of wonderful food!! I wished we had a market like this where I live. There were so many yummy things I wished I could buy to take home, but knew I couldn't fly home with them.

Check out all the wonderful colors in this stand!!

Our favorite find was these delicious Italian pastries. They had ones filled with Nutella, custard, or raspberry filling. We just bought one to start out with, and ended up going back a couple more times!!! They tasted like a fresh jelly doughnut! Yummy!!

For lunch, we had to try this one stand with a really long line. Everyone was raving about the food. We got butternut squash tamales and fish tacos. The tamales were ok, but the fish tacos were yummy!! (By this time we were stuffed, we'd eaten so many samples and treats. Everything from fruits, vegetables, smoked salmon, all kinds of cheese and hummus, breads with olive oil, and lots more!) My favorite fruit we had was the pinapple guavas. My grandpa used to have a guava tree in his backyard, and growing up we'd eat them in his backyard all the time. It was good to eat them again. It was a fun reminder of him.....

Next we took a crowded street car to get on a bus to Coit Tower. It was so jam-packed in there, it reminded me of some of the subways in New York.

We took an elevator up the tower, and got to see some great views of San Francisco up there.

Here is Alcatraz island from the top of Coit tower. (Another way we got to "experience Alcatraz" without actually going there......)

Then we headed back to Pier 39 for some more window shopping, and to see the sea lions. If you look closely you can see them behind us. There are tons of them just sitting up on the docks. It was pretty noisy with all their barking. After stopping at the Boudin bread place for some clam chowder in a bread bowl, we headed back to Sacramento to Tammy's house. We spent the night there, and went to church with her in the morning. Then we said goodbye, and all flew back to our homes. It was such a fun trip, and one I'll always remember. Thanks to all that were able to come!! It was great to be with you!!! (And I'm thankful for my blog, so that I can have a place to write all about it!!)