I just realized something that I should have realized two years ago…I never finished writing my travel posts about my epic trip to Iceland & Europe, which was two years ago. I knew that I had a problem with procrastination, but wow- I didn’t realize I’d hit the two year mark. I still plan on getting those done, but I’m not about to make any promises to myself about the timeline. And when I do finally get to them, I’ll probably be posting them somewhere else…which brings me to another update. A while ago I decided that I wanted to have more control over the format of my blog and ads and what not so I decided to start a self-hosted site (and because technology and I aren’t bff’s, I decided to start a new website instead of figuring out how to carry all this stuff over). Now don’t get too excited, since I’m really good at procrastinating all I’ve done with it so far is figure out some basic coding and carry over some of my favourite posts from this site. I’ll do a formal “reveal” once I’ve got some more content on it but it most definitely will not be ready until the beginning of 2016. All of my creative energy in the first half of 2015 went towards my brother and new sister-in-laws wedding and now that they’re off and hitched, all that energy is dedicated to my own wedding this November 🙂
Okay, now onto the purpose of this post! I needed a vacation and I needed one badly. My fiance and I hadn’t been away since our trip two years ago, and as epic as it was I needed a vacation before our honeymoon in November. So, we kept our eyes on flight deals and when we came across a nicely priced flight to San Francisco we looked at each other and said “let’s do it!”. And off we went…**warning, this is going to be a long and photo heavy post…proceed with caution 😉
We stayed in an amazing airbnb. I cannot recommend airbnb.com enough. We always stay in them and have always had an excellent time. It’s so great to save money and get more space and amenities than hotels have to offer. Our San Fran airbnb was very close to all the things that we wanted to see and do, which was amazing and we definitely got our exercise with all those hills.
We had the perfect host in San Fran…meet Pacu
I was most excited about visiting Alcatraz in San Francisco…so excited that I bought our tickets the day after we bought our flights. To say that visiting Alcatraz was on my bucket list is the underestimation of the year. Anyways, Alcatraz did not disappoint. The audio tour was done exceptionally well and it was absolutely beautiful in a historical and dark way.
This is one of the three holes that inmates dug out with spoons (I think…) to escape…
One of the last surviving men who served time at Alcatraz was there. He has written a book about his experience and was signing copies. Obviously I had to buy a book, get it signed AND ask for a photo. I’m in the middle of the book right now and loving it.
After Alcatraz we saw Pier 39. Unfortunately all the sea lions were off mating and usually don’t return until August. Although I would have loved to see the pier filled with those cuties, it was fairly amusing to see it this empty.
Next on our list was Golden Gate Bridge. We completely underestimated how close it was so after a while of walking we came across Ghieradelli Square and decided to have a nutrition packed lunch of massive sundae’s. That was sarcasm, in case you missed it. These things were diabetes in a plastic cup.
I, not surprisingly, didn’t feel too great after demolishing that sucker (dairy, sugar and I still aren’t friends). So we kept trucking on toward the Golden Gate Bridge and ended up renting bikes to speed us along. We biked across the bridge and back, which was a lot of fun! Nothing like a good bike ride to cure some nausea.
Next we were off to find Lombard St.
Did I mention that we did all of this in one day? As you can imagine, we were exhausted after all of this. We decided to treat ourselves and we had a fantastic dinner on Forbes Island, which is a man made island that floats in Pier 39. This was actually super neat and totally one of the highlights of our trip. They even pick you up in a small boat to bring you to the island!
The island was used by the creator as a bachelor pad for a long time and then sold and brought to pier 39 and turned into a restaurant. They tried to keep a lot of the original decor though and to get to the bathroom you had to go through the old bedroom! I could feel the sway of the man-made island when were on it but my fiance was not sensitive to the movement at all and thought that I was crazy!
After dinner we were able to go to the top of the lighthouse on the island. It was so beautiful to look over the bay at night, but our pictures didn’t do it justice.
I was going to try to make just one post about our trip since our trip was only a week long…however, since the post is already super long and this is just a day and a half of adventures I’m going to break it up…and try really hard to actually post more before two years passes by 🙂
Next up will be about our days in Monterey, Carmel by the Sea and Big Sur…
xoxo
Erin
Sift, Stir & Savour 