I Left My Heart in San Francisco!

WARNING: This is another blog post with TONS of pictures!!!
I took over 900 pictures in 5 days.. So you have been warned...

12.16

First things first!!

I need to thank my thoughtful, loving, generous amazing husband for such a wonderful Christmas gift!!

He surprised me during Thanksgiving dinner with an early gift - a 5 day trip to San Francisco!! We had such a great time!! We left on Thursday from Fort Lauderdale..

We had to wake up at 4 am.. Not a good look for me! Didn't help matters that I went to bed around 1 am the night before and I spent most of Wednesday crying hysterically at the thought of leaving Sofia behind!! I had never been away from her longer than 24 hours in all her 13 months.. Let alone leave the state!! I cried on the way to drop her off at my In-Laws' and I cried on the way home.. I cried when we took off from Ft Lauderdale and from Atlanta.. I landed in San Francisco with a killer headache and some lovely bags under my eyes. Needless to say, when we got to our hotel at around 5 pm west coast time, my 2 hour "nap" turned into a 12 hour nap.. I'm a little sad I slept through the night on our first night there, but I really needed to rest!! {For some reason, I have not been sleeping well a few nights a week for the past 6 months or so.. Nothing to do with Sofie waking me up}

Bye bye FLL!! We will see you soon!!!

Beautiful day to be in the air!

In the lobby of our hotel, Hotel Vertigo! Loved the colors on the tree!

On Friday {12.7} Nery had booked a tour for us to visit the Muir Woods, Sausalito and Alcatraz! The tour picked us up from our hotel at 8.15 am SHARP!! So it was a good thing that I got plenty of rest the first night, because we did not stop!! 

We had a giant breakfast before the tour at Hollywood Cafe.. it was delish! I had a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich with a latte.. The sandwich was HUGE!!!! But oh so yumm!! I don't remember what Nery ate..

Loved the menu!!

It was about an hour-ish drive to the Muir Woods and so beautiful!!!! I love the mountains, and I enjoyed listening the history and fun facts the tour guide was giving us {my fave fun fact - there are more registered dogs in San Francisco than there are babies! He gave us the numbers, but I don't remember that either.. I'm sure I could Google it, but I don't feel like it right now!}

Nery and I dressed for the cool weather of the city, but didn't think to check the weather up in the mountains, and it was COLD!! I mean, yes, I am a Floridian, so it may not have been that that cold, but it was cold for us and we were suffering a little until we started walking through the woods..

Words cannot describe how beautiful the Muir Woods are! Well.. I'm sure someone has the words, but I don't! The height of the Redwood trees is just impressively amazing!! I'll let the photos speak for themselves!!

Stunning!

After visiting the trees for a while, we stopped in Sausalito for lunch.. Such a cute place! We were only there for about an hour.. just enough time to get some lunch and a few pics of the SF skyline! On our way back to the city our tour guide stopped at Fort Baker and we got a beautiful view of the Golden Gate Bridge!! 

After a quick return to the tour company's home office, we were taken over to the pier to board Alcatraz Cruises for our trip out to The Rock! The weather was gorgeous {that day, and the whole time we were there!!!} so we were able to get some great pictures!! When you get to the island, it's a little bit of a hike up the actual prison, where you can get a personal audio tour.. It was so interesting to see the jail cells, and hear the voices of people who were actual guards while Alcatraz was open.. Sadly, my audio tour player decided to die before we got to finish walking around, but what I did get to hear was very informative

By the time we walked back down to area where the ferry was waiting to take us back, it felt like three days had passed already!! I felt like we had already done and seen so much, and it was only our first full day!!! 

That night we had dinner at a diner a few blocks away from our hotel and then walked down to Union Square and did a little shopping! The Christmas decorations all over the city were so pretty and Christmasy and magical!! I. Love. Christmas. hee hee!! 

Saturday, we took our rental car up to Napa!!! Oh my goodness, Napa is gorgeous!!!!! We visited two wineries, Castello di Amoroso and Duckhorn Vinyard and Winery.. 

The Castle was so much fun!! We took a tour of the castle - the wine making rooms, the wine caves, the dungeons and even the torture chamber.. Before I go on, the castle was built in 1996 and they opened their doors in 2007 {if I'm not mistaken} so the dungeons and torture chamber where never used for those purposes! But the castle is still amazing! It was built to reflect the different castle building styles over the years {our tour guide went over all of that, but I don't remember all of the exact names of the building styles!} 

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Speaking of not sleeping.. I slept terrible last night, so I need to go to bed.. I will finish tomorrow..

Night night bloggers!! 

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12.17

Back to the Castle..

As most of you know, Nery isn't much of a drinker.. so I got to do a wine tasting while Nery watched!! It was really good.. I liked most of the wines at the Castle, but my favorite part of that tasting was having some wine straight from a barrel.  Since the few wineries I have visited didn't offer tours of where there barrels were kept, I had never tried it like that before! There were a few that I didn't really like, but there are some that I loved!!! I wrote them down somewhere.. But I can't find my list!

<<CASTLE PICS HERE>>

Between the Castle and Duckhorn, we decided to go visit the Old Faithful Geyser of California! I think maybe we were expecting more than what we got, but it was interesting! Definitely something I have never seen before! I did learn that this geyser is one of 3 in the world that is considered faithful.. It would squirt water out of the ground ever 5 to 10 minutes, and you could hear it gurgling before and after it would come up!!!! Even though it was less than what I expected, it was still pretty impressive! I enjoyed it and learned a little bit about this geyser!

<<GEYSER PICS>>

After the geyser we searched for a winery that was close by and wasn't about to close {a lot of the wineries closed between 4 and 5, and it was almost 4} and one of the ones that came up in our search was Duckhorn.. OH EM GEE it was AMAZEBALLS!!!!! I got to taste six wines, and all six were out of this world!!! I felt bad leaving some wine in the glasses but I couldn't finish all of them! I was pretty tipsy by the time we left Duckhorn!

The Castle was visually stunning, but the Duckhorn wine was deliciously stunning!! I cannot wait to go back to Napa!!!

<<DUCKHORN PICS>>

We found a random Mexican place in Napa Valley and it was so so delish!! That was my first taste of Mexican food in Cali and it was a WIN!!!  Nom nom nom

Sunday, Nery got us tickets to go to the Walt Disney Family Museum and to see their Snow White Expo!! Ever since we dressed Sofia as Snow for Halloween we both have a new found love for Disney's first princess!! I was never a fan of hers to begin with, but now I find myself looking for and loving everything Snow White!!!! All thanks to my own little Snow!

The museum and expo were great!! I love everything Disney!

My hubby knows me so well!

The area where the museum is located has an amazing view of the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz and the entire Bay! HAHAHAHAHA!! It was gorgeous!!!

<<DISNEY MUSEUM PICS>>

I Googled the Full House house, and we were about 2 blocks away from it, so guess what?! We found it and took a picture!!

<<FULL HOUSE HOUSE>>

After we learned about Disney, we went down to Fisherman's Wharf and had lunch at Boudin's.. It smelled so yummy in there!! They bake their bread there and it smelled AHHHHHH-MAZING!!! After our late lunch we decided to find out about a sunset cruise around the Bay.. When we got to the ticket place we found out they were leaving in 15 minutes for the last cruise of the day!! Talk about good timing!!

<<SUNSET CRUISE PICS>>

Once we got off the cruise, of course they tried to sell us the picture they took of us when we boarded the boat.. and I bought it!

<<PIC I BOUGHT>>

We walked our way over to Ghirardelli and had yummy brownie sundaes!! Then we decided that we had to ride a trolly back to our car.. So, we waited in a 25+ minute line to board the trolly.. Then we lost our seats to some rude bitch with a kid because I wanted to hang off the side of the trolly to take a picture {we asked someone to save our seats so we could go take a picture, and the heifer that stole our seats was told we were sitting there and she didn't move her ass.. Bitch} So.. We really did end up hanging off the side of the trolly.. To go two blocks. Then we had to walk about 11 blocks back to our car.. But it was nice.. we got some beautiful views of the skyline when we stumbled across Lombard Street {the Crooked Street} and then walked down it.. It was steep! But so cute!!

Every night we ended up back in the hotel room around 9ish.. and yes, we felt like old people, going back to bed so soon but we did so much during the day that we needed to rest!!!

Monday was our last day in the City by the Bay {look at that.. I rhymed!} We woke up early-ish because we wanted to take our time eating breakfast, buying some souvenirs and driving past the Crooked street again.. I wanted to get a picture in the daytime..

<<CROOKED STREET PIC>>

Before breakfast even.. I got a call.. a call that will change my life and Sofie's life in 2013.. I got a job! I am happy to be going back to work, to be around grown ups not in Gymboree, but I am so heartbroken about leaving Sofia in a daycare.. WAH! Time out.. I will talk more about this later..  This is going to make me cry.. again.

We went to breakfast at Han's Cafe, which became our breakfast place of choice all weekend! It was yum every time! We did some walking around, a little shopping, and then finished packing our bags, got in the car and started the drive to the airport!!

San Francisco is an amazing place! So beautiful and so clean!!! I would definitely rank this trip as top 5! I want to go back and I want to see and learn more!!

I truly did leave a little piece of my heart in San Francisco!!

Hugs..