San Fran Day 1

This last weekend, my younger brother, Danny, was getting married in Northern California near San Francisco. Since we couldn't afford to fly all the kids up for the wedding, we just kinda turned it into a little weekend getaway for Justin and I. We had so much fun! HUGE kudos to Andrea for taking on the extra 4 kiddos. We know Shane helped too, but he worked a lot and had church meetings. So we know who took the brunt end of the "Can you please?" and lap climbing all weekend! Really, we are just so thankful that our kids have always got along so well, and there really are never any squabbles to resolve between all of those cuties! And everyone has someone to play with! Awesome :)

So, Friday, was the day we flew out and we were kinda lucky that Justin had been working nights that week so he could drive home, have a shower, and drive into town with us. (That means no worrying about his work truck). The kiddos seemed to make themselves right at home at their Aunt & Uncle's so we weren't stressed leaving (although I knew it would be seamless, they love their cousins!) Our flight left around 3:15 and we have not flown anywhere for a LONG time. I'm talking since Carter was a baby and we flew to see family in Washington. The plane kept dropping once it was in flight and it scared the crap out of me! I kept grabbing Justin's arm asking him why it's doing that? I'm a baby, I know.

Once we landed and checked into our hotel, we decided to try to catch the train/subway/bus, whatever we could find to check out Fisherman's Wharf and eat dinner. Let me just say that we are definitely NOT connoisseurs of public transportation! We looked at a map for the closest BART station and decided since it was just shy of 2 miles, we would walk there. We are cheap and didn't want to pay for a taxi. And although I had fun walking and talking with Justin, that couple miles seemed to take FOREVER and we were walking through an industrial, kinda ghetto-ish part of town. The streets were so tiny too! We kept commenting on the squishiness of the houses, the jam-packed driveways. Oh my heavens, we are definitely more comfortable living in the country. Well, we arrive at what we think might be the BART station, but are feeling very confused and don't know how long we might be waiting for the bus to arrive (we didn't really know that BART was a subway). Well, the bus does come and I just ask him to point us in the right direction to get to Fisherman's Wharf. Luckily, he took pity on us and gave us a free ride to the BART station down the street and told us where to get off to take the Muni bus. What a guy!

Yay! We made it on the subway. However, not before staring at the ticket machine and looking like complete idiots for several minutes, and putting in dollars only to get quarters back out. How do you work this thing?! LOL Some other man took pity on us (you will find this as a common theme throughout our trip) and just bought the ticket for us with our money. Haha! We felt pretty silly. Add to the confusion of which train to get on once you're down there and oh my...I have a whole new respect for people that do this on a daily basis and also for people in movies who are trying to outrun subways in the tunnels. Those things are crazy fast and create quite the gust of wind when they are coming!

After many more questionable, confusing moments, we did at last make it to Fisherman's Wharf. Hooray! The wind was a little chilly, but it was SO nice outside, the architecture is so charming, and the people watching is A+!! 60-year-old lady with light-up rollerblades interpretative dancing by herself in the middle of the sidewalk, older man dressed like a dog wondering out loud why people might think he's crazy, and another man dressed in captain suit screaming "It's Friidaay, I love you!!!" and high-fiving people in the street. We were entertained to say the least! We ate dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp. YUMMY! It was so good. I got the bucket o' trash and Justin got a Cajun chicken sandwich (sad for him he's allergic to shellfish).

We did a lot of walking to Ghirardelli Square and other sights around the area. It was fun to just not have anywhere to go really. And we were just enjoying each other's company (and the free samples at Ghirardelli). But near the end, Justin's back hurt, my knee hurt from all our walking and we realized we had a long, confusing trek back to our hotel. So we set off to get back on the Muni bus to get back on BART. Yeah, once we got to the BART station, there was a homeless man in a wheelchair at the top of the stairs telling us it was broken and we had to go to a different station. We said "Oh, okay" and started walking towards a different BART station. But standing at the crosswalk, we realized everyone else was still going down there and hardly anyone was coming up. So we decided to go check out the "broken" station for ourselves. And alas, it was in working order. Haha! Don't trust those homeless guys in wheelchairs ;)