There are two ways you can go about reading this post. You can either not read it, and just look at the pictures, or you can read about what happened along the way.
Thursday morning before my last final I had this crazy idea... hey, we should just drive down to San Fran! or Napa! Or somewhere that might be warmer than Oregon! I texted Alex while he was at work and he was surprisingly up for it.
We never do things like this! The most spontaneous we have ever been was a drive out to the coast for the day. And typically we don't even do that. We have ideas all the time about taking off but we never go through with them!
But after my final on Thursday I was more than ready to ditch town for a few days. I spent most of the evening looking for a really good cheap deal on a hotel. I found lots of hotels around the $100 range, but they were either super far from downtown or they looked like a hell hole. Everything else reasonable was in the 150-200 dollar per night range and we really didn't have that much money to spend on this last minute trip.
I decided to check out hotwire, and see what they had. And they happened to have a 4 star hotel in the east union square area for $98 a night, but you couldn't see the name of the hotel. We are super picky about hotels and this was a little scary to think about for us. But we really didn't care about how nice the hotel was, as long as it wasn't in a sketchy neighborhood, so we booked it.
And it was beautiful! Honestly, it was the nicest room we have ever stayed in! Only the lobby at the Westin in Hawaii was better, (because how can you beat live flamingos?). We paid half the price that our hotel would have cost for both nights by booking it on hotwire. If you've thought about going this route but have been hesitant, I would highly recommend it. We got an amazing deal for our hotel. (btw, it was the Hotel Zetta on Market and 5th. It was amazing. Beautiful and the most amazing service we have ever gotten!)
Day 1
I spent all day Friday cleaning and packing! I had to pack all of my stuff plus Alex's, as well as anything we needed. Had the house fully cleaned and dinner ready when Alex got home around 6:15.
We took off around 7pm. We could have waited and left in the morning, but this way gave us more time in the city. Alex and I drove 6 hours south for the night and stopped in Redding, CA and slept in our car in a Walmart parking lot. My mom was pretty worried about this, but we were in a section where a bunch of people in RV's were staying for the night, so it was plenty safe. We got there around 2am and went in Walmart to use the restroom. Which is where one of the most embarrassing moments of my life happened...
After I went to the bathroom, I was in there washing my hands when someone walked in... a man! I was really confused when he continued to a stall even after seeing me (clearly a woman) in there and decided I should let him know it was the women's restroom....
"Um, sir, this is actually the women's restroom?"
And then it donned on me...
maybe that is a woman! not because they looked feminine (not by any stretch of the imagination), but because they had to of known it was the women's restroom!
person: "What?"
Me
wide eyed: "OH, never mind..."
person: "Well obviously this is the women's bathroom otherwise I wouldn't be in here!"
Crap crap crap. Why didn't I just keep my mouth shut?? I usually don't say things like this to strangers, but obviously at 2am I had no filter.
I bolted out of that bathroom as fast as I could and me and Alex had a good laugh about that for the next half hour.
Anyways, we made a little bed in the back of our Prius and got a surprisingly good amount of sleep before we took off at 7:00ish the next morning.
Day 2
Four hours later we drove into the beautiful and hectic San Francisco!
We checked into our hotel (several hours early). And as soon as our car was parked and our bags were in our room, we showered and hit the town.
What kind of amazing hotel has an espresso machine in the room?? Oh, ours did.
Loved the floors and the rug!
After we got all our stuff settled in we headed out to eat lunch (we were starving!) and began exploring the city.
I'm not even going to try to describe everything we saw on that first day, all I will say is that we walked, walked, walked! Eight hours of straight walking! I was actually pretty impressed that we didn't get super tired and throw in the towel after the first 4 hours, but we just kept on exploring.
This isn't a very good picture, but the only one we got someone to take for us. I was nervous to hand my camera over to strangers.
There were tons of amazingly talented street performers down by the piers, it was so cool to see them.
Ghirardelli Square. Honestly, I didn't think it was that exciting (I'm not much of a chocolate fan) but it was cool to see none-the-less.
We stopped for dinner at this amazing sushi restaurant down by the Hyde St. Pier called
Flying Ninja Sushi. So freaking good! Second best Sushi restaurant we have ever been to! We are big sushi fans so this was a big deal to us.
Side note: First best was Sansei Seafood and Sushi bar in Maui! If you are ever in Maui you absolutely have to eat there! Well, if you like sushi.Day 3
Even though my feet were killing me, and Alex's legs were sore, we headed out for another day of exploring. This time we planned to stay closer to our hotel or take a bus if we wanted to go somewhere far away.
But that didn't happen!On our way to find food we found the San Francisco city hall, which was gorgeous!
I know this picture is blurry but it was the best picture of the building we got.
Some cool statue.
On our quest we found a farmers market and found a cool food cart that was serving breakfast items.
I just liked the way this house looked! I'd love to live in a house like this someday.
We stopped in some park on our walk to lay down for a little while. The weather was gorgeous. It was perfect T-shirt weather.
A really pretty building we saw waiting for a bus.
We hopped a few busses and went out to see the golden gate bridge, it was cool but we went a little late so it was really cold by the time we got there and it was hard to get any good pictures.
We hopped on another bus to get back to our hotel area to go to dinner... but we ended up missing our bus stop and realized it way way far away from anything we knew. We took about 5 other busses to get back to the right area of town and by the time we sat down to eat it was 9:30. We were still several miles from our hotel! We really didn't want to walk back in the dark (there were lots of sketchy areas on the way) and we didn't ever want to step foot on another bus again. So after we had a few (too many) drinks, we hailed a cab (for the first time) and headed back to our hotel.
Clearly I had too many glasses of wine. I have like 100 more pictures of me being a psycho and jumping on the hotel bed like a freak, but I decided one was enough for you guys!
In the morning we stopped in Berkley for some breakfast, grabbed some Starbucks, and made the long journey home.
Only moments before we were officially back in Oregon we were greeted by the all too familiar rain fall. Oh, Oregon.
We had so much fun, and it was worth the extra expense that we weren't planning on making. We would love to go back this summer if we have an opportunity. And maybe we will get to see some of the stuff that we weren't able to see on our short trip this time.
PS. For anyone that remembers about my driving-on-the-freeway panic attacks, I think they are gone. I drove for four hours in the dark and rain on the way home and a few hours on the way down. Ahh, I'm so happy to be a semi normal person again. ;)
