San Francisco, April 2009 (Days 1 & 2)

Waaaayyy back in April, as a gift to my mom, I planned and arranged a weekend trip for the two of us to San Francisco. Neither of us had been before so we planned a full weekend of sight-seeing. After arriving and getting settled into our hotel in Union Square, we promptly set out to explore and decided to head to the relatively close Chinatown. We putzed around through the shops, watched fortune cookies being made, and enjoyed the architecture. That evening we wandered aimlessly throughout the city and eventually settled into our beds. Thus began the "48 Hour Mystery" tradition...for each of the 3 nights we curled up in our beds and watched 2 back to back episodes while munching on cookies and drinking wine. A perfect ladies night!

Saturday morning we were up and out early for the farmer's market where we bought fresh cheese, bread, and pastries for our breakfast. We then made our way to Pier 39. On the way, we happened upon this guy:
He would sit with those branches hiding him and then jump out to scare unsuspecting passerby. My mom loved this and ran up to him to grab a picture. What ensued was a hysterical conversation in which he said "If you want to take a picture of my bush, you need to pay me!"...to which my mom replied "That's what I always say!". After that, they were like long lost best friends and we spent a bit of time chatting with him. And here's the picture of my mom in his bush (which we did pay for):


Pier 39 was nothing special...aside from the sea lions, which I LOVED! We watched some turf wars, but mostly witnessed a lot of sleepy animals. We spent a bit of time on the pier and then left to make our boat trip over to Alcatraz. To be honest, I didn't know much about "The Rock" other than its lengthy list of infamous prisoners. We did the audio tour and I thought it was fascinating. I highly recommend the trip over and the full audio tour. Plus...the views are amazing.




Our full day of walking and exploring had us back in our hotel early and settled in just in time for another "48 Hours" marathon.