January 5th, 2009
We had a pretty amazing trip last week. We were lucky to have our good friend Matt drive us to/from San Francisco. We left on Tuesday, December 30th. The drive up was uneventful. We did encounter some gray skies, but nothing that was serious weather wise.
Gray skies over Highway 101, somewhere in California.
This Muni rail sighting was the first obvious sign that we had made it to San Francisco.
Matt dropped us off at our hotel. Our accomodations weren’t fancy, but they were adequate for our needs. The hotel itself is full of artwork, and our room was no exception.
Artwork that wrapped around the wall, near the ceiling in our hotel room.
The bathroom had a fish theme to the artwork.
After we settled in at the hotel, we found a nearby diner and enjoyed a simple but tasty lunch of burgers and fries. We returned to the hotel and rested for a bit. Then we decided to take a walk. Neither of us had really been to San Francisco before, so we just picked a direction and started walking. We came to Union Square, which was still adorned in its holiday decor. There was a huge Christmas tree, an ice skating rink and more. The shops nearby also sported some impressive displays.
Big Christmas tree next to the Union Square statue.
A Christmas palm tree across the street from Macy’s.
Ice skating rink, Union Square.
We left Union Square and walked some more. Lacking a plan, we just wandered around and saw as much of the city as was possible. We eventually wound up back at Union Square, which was good ’cause we were both ready to head back to the hotel. We stopped into a nearby Starbuck’s and picked up a few things before returning to the hotel. We spent the rest of the night relaxing and watching TV.
The next day, we met up with some friends who were in town from Minnesota. The plan for the day was to visit the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. We walked to a nearby BART terminal and caught the N train.
That took us to a Caltrain terminal.
We all commented on how Caltrain reminded us of Metra. We rode Caltrain to Santa Clara, where we caught a bus that took us to the Winchester Mystery House. We took both of the tours offered by the Mystery House.
This staircase terminates into a ceiling. Winchester Mystery House has many of these kinds of construction oddities. Mrs. Winchester believed (on the advice of a psychic) that the house could never be completed, as that would help keep out evil spirits.
The infamous Door to Nowhere.
A window built into the floor.
We spent several hours at the Mystery House, and had a lot of fun. We left there, had some lunch and then used the same bus/train combination to get back to San Francisco. We retreated to our respective hotels to get some rest. Later that night, we met up again to go see the New Year’s fireworks. We considered once again trying to ride the N Train, but the thing was jammed with people.
We decided to just walk up The Embarcadero. We passed through some pretty serious crowds and wound up in an open area behind some palm trees. The trees caused the fireworks to be partially obscured, but we could still see the show OK.
Once the fireworks had finished, we moved through the crowds again and headed back to our hotels. Jen and I were feeling hungry so I went to a nearby pizzeria and picked up some slices. Not surprisingly, the place was packed with hungry New Year’s revelers. It wasn’t too bad, though and the pizza was pretty good.
We slept in the next day, and met up again with our friends from out of town. We walked over to Chinatown.
Did a little shopping and had a nice lunch. Then we did some serious hill climbing to get to Telegraph Hill and Coit Tower.
Downtown San Francisco, through a fence on Telegraph Hill.
San Francisco, from the viewing area on top of Coit Tower.
San Francisco Bay, from the viewing area on top of Coit Tower.
Once we were finished with Coit Tower, we walked down the other side of Telegraph Hill. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered so many stairs in my life. This photo provides some idea of just how far down it is:
Coit Tower, on top of the hill. Stairs leading downward. You can’t see all of the stairs in this photo, but they’re there.
We then caught another train to Fisherman’s Wharf. We walked around there for a bit and stepped into a few shops. Fisherman’s Wharf is reminiscent of Chicago’s Navy Pier in terms of its tourist trap-iness. But it was still fun. Plus, we saw this cool seagull:
We walked around a little bit more and eventually caught one of San Francisco’s world-famous cable cars back to the hotel. We said our goodbyes to our friends from Minnesota, sending them off with a late Christmas gift we were saving. A little later, I went down the street and picked up some decent Mexican food from a place whose name I don’t recall. The next morning, Matt picked us up at the hotel. On our way out, we stopped for some food in Daly City.
Jen christened this plaza as the “Health Mecca.” The sign pretty much explains it all. Like our trip up, our trip down to San Luis Obispo was uneventful. Expect to hear more from me this week about the trip. I’ll probably do an audio blog entry about it at some point. Many more photos can be found here and here.
January 6th, 2009 at 12:46 am
[...] “Bay Area trip recap” [...]
January 8th, 2009 at 9:11 am
That sounds great! I’m glad you enjoyed your trip. That house looks really cool… I’ll have to visit it next time I’m there.
January 29th, 2009 at 10:33 am
The photo of the Macy’s storefront, is that a television crew van?
Is the Caltrain a double-decker train? It looks like it but it also looks maybe too small to get up there.
San Francisco, from what I’ve heard and have seen it’s one of the hilliest cities. I think I’d be out of breath for sure, LOL.
January 30th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
I think it is a news van, Andy. I hadn’t noticed that before. And yes – Caltrain is double-decker.