What to do in San Francisco

San Francisco is one of those cities that you hear a lot about, but you can’t really understand how great the city is until you visit. We headed out to California for a wedding, the Rock n Roll Half Marathon, and to visit Friends. This was my first time visiting the West Coast, we spent a week exploring between San Jose and San Francisco. We left at the end of the week thinking “how can we make it work to move out there?”

We stayed a few days with friends in San Jose, the city that hosted the half marathon I was running. I was the only one doing the half, one of our friends did the 10k. It was a nice course that ran through town. It was mostly flat which is always a plus for those of us Florida runners who aren’t used to hills. I had a good time, but I wouldn’t put it in my top 5 courses I’ve done. (Incase you’re wondering the RnR Philly course is my favorite!) Once I finished the run on Sunday morning we could move on to exploring.

Winchester Mystery House

One of the main attractions in San Jose is the Winchester Mystery House. I had read up on this house and it sounded really cool. Sadly I feel that it was a little underwhelming for the hype. It’s a nice house, but I didn’t think it was as mysterious as the website and stories play it up to be. It still was full on interesting stories and the house itself is quite impressive. It was a fun outing for the day. When it was built is was situated miles outside the city. Today it sits right in the middle of town, surrounded by busy streets and neighborhoods. 

Muir Woods

On Monday we rented a car to drive from San Jose into San Francisco. In my research I didn’t even look into public transportation. I don’t know why but probably because we don’t have good public transportation in Florida, so I’m not used to it. We realized we could have rode the train into San Francisco for a fraction of the cost of renting a car (oh well, you live and learn, right?)

Driving wasn’t too bad, the one thing we had to get used to was they have traffic lights on the on ramps to the freeways. We don’t have those in Florida so that was interesting. We went the long way around through Oakland because we wanted to make a stop at Muir Woods to see the red wood trees. Prior to our trip I asked on FB for suggestions of must see/do things. Muir Woods was on the top of the list of suggestions I received.  The woods did not disappoint, we spent a few hours hiking through the woods and it was beautiful! We were told if you went far enough you could see the beach on the other side, about 2 hours into our hike we passed some other hikers who said that was not true. So we turned back, I still don’t know 100% either way if that’s true or false. Anyone know the answer?

You have to drive pretty far up a mountain to get to the entrance to Muir Woods. On the drive down every so often they had these pull overs so you could stop to take in the view and take pictures.

On our way into the city we stopped in Sausalito, a cute little town across the bay from San Francisco. We found a cute little seafood restaurant with outdoor seating to eat lunch and this little town could not be any more beautiful. The way the houses are built up the hills, and all painted pretty fun colors in the downtown area was magical. There were lots of bike riders everywhere, most people either bike across the Golden Gate Bridge, or bring their bikes across on a ferry. The line of people with bikes waiting for the Ferry was crazy.

After lunch we headed into the City to our hotel, we were told to stop at the park right before you cross the Golden Gate Bridge. The problem we found with stopping while heading into San Francisco is the park is on the opposite side of the road. We weren’t sure how to get over to it with out crossing the Golden Gate. There was no way to change directions and crossing the bridge three times wasn’t an option since it’s a toll bridge! Instead we randomly went up a side road before crossing thinking we should be able to at least see the view somewhere along the way up. It was better then we expected! I think we got even better pictures going this route then we would have in the park which was on street level.

We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge into the city in our rental car and promptly did two things: 1. Find our hotel, check in and unload our stuff. 2. Immediately returned the rental car because driving in the city is too stressful and we didn’t need a car for the rest of the trip.

Hayes Valley Inn

We stayed at Hayes Valley Inn. It was perfect for us, centrally located, close to stops for most public transportation options, and very budget friendly. I had a hard time finding somewhere to stay, because hotels in San Francisco are expensive!! I searched and searched for something not $200+ a night and finally found this place on Yelp! of all places. (I always just associate Yelp! with finding restaurants, but they actually have reviews on anything and everything you’d want to know about!)  Just a heads up Hayes Valley Inn is Budget friendly because it’s a little different then a regular hotel.

It’s a bed and breakfast, but it’s a communal style. We didn’t have our own bathroom in our room. There are a few bathrooms in the main hallway on each floor that are shared among all the travelers. We had no problem with this as we never had to wait, there was a bathroom open every time we needed one.

Since we spent most of our 1st day driving around and visiting Muir Woods by the time we made it into the city and found our hotel we decided first to find somewhere to eat dinner. We ended up going to a Sushi restaurant that was right around the corner from our hotel. It was a very small place, but it was amazing!! The Sushi was so good and on our “long way around” walk back to the Inn we discovered an ice cream place.

It was called “Smitten Ice cream” and it was a little different then your usual ice cream place. They used all fresh ingredients (example I ordered mint chocolate and it was actual mint leaves chopped up in it) and they made the ice cream with liquid nitrogen which meant it was mixed in a puff of “smoke” while you waited. The explanation was that pre-made already frozen ice cream changes flavor over time. With this method it’s always made to order and eaten right away. It was quite interesting. More of these places have popped up since we discovered this one but this was a first for us at the time.

The next morning started our two day exploration San Francisco! My husband spent a summer in this beautiful city when he was in college, while his Mom lived there. This trip wasn’t as exciting for him as it was for me since he’d been here before.

Lombard St. 

We bought tickets ahead of time for Alcatraz so we did a little exploring on our way down to the pier. We made our way to Lombard street, the famous crooked street. It was pretty and winds down a hill. We walked down the side walk down the hill, but there were tons of cars driving down the crooked street. Can you imagine living on this street and not only having to back out into this crooked street, but also compete with all the tourists driving down constantly.

Side note everywhere we walked I was obsessed with looking at home values on Zillow! I mean this city is beautiful and I would love to live here, but who can afford these prices! I wanted to ask everyone I saw taking out their trash or doing something outside “Hi, what do you do to afford this house?” I mean look at these prices!

Fisherman’s Wharf

From Lombard St. we headed down to Fisherman’s Wharf and wandered around looking at all the seafood stands. We tried a lobster roll and it was delicious! We passed a bakery where they were making all kinds of animals with the dough, which was interesting. We also made a stop at Pier 39 to see the sea lions. I think we were there in off season because there weren’t that many out and they were all on the platforms farthest away from us!

Alcatraz

Next was on to explore Alcatraz. It’s pretty popular so just a tip we learned, make sure you buy your tickets ahead of time. If you don’t you will be stuck with limited choices of times for your tour. We lucked out because I don’t think October was a very popular time for visits, so it wasn’t too limited on times. I had a friend who went recently and she said they couldn’t get tickets on their own, they had to go through a tour company and had to pay for a larger city tour that included Alcatraz.

The weather in California was amazing our whole trip so waiting in line was nothing like having to wait in line for things in Florida. We had to wait about 30 min before it was time to board our ferry for the trip over. It was windy out in the bay during the short trip over, and the view was beautiful of the city from out in the water.

We did the Audio tour and it was very informative. The stories were good, there were a few about escape attempts and hidden tunnels inmates had dug. They said they have no record of anyone surviving an escape attempt because of the rough waters. They would have had to swim a long way to make it back to land. I really enjoyed this tour, and highly recommend everyone make sure to fit it in your schedule when you visit San Francisco. However, if I was ranking prison tours Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia had more history and higher profile criminal residents.

Cable Cars

After we finished with our tour of Alcatraz, we headed back through the wharf to find the famous cable cars. They are at the top of every “top things to do in San Francisco” list I found when I was planning our trip. Just a heads up the cable cars only run through a small corner of the city. I don’t know that they’re ideal for actual transportation, I think most people are just riding them as a tourist attraction. Also it costs about $5 to ride one way which doesn’t take you very far. It was fun though. We got on in the back platform. I didn’t realize when my Husband kept asking if we should move up front, which looked packed to me, that he meant on the outside. I realized this after we made it to the end of the route. So I made him go back so we could at least take a picture on the outside. I’m kinda sad we didn’t get to ride on the outside, but there’s always next time!

16th Ave Tiled Steps Project

One of the off the beaten path things we wanted to find while there was something my cousin told us about. It’s called the 16th Avenue Tiled Steps Project. It took us awhile to find the steps because they are in a residential part of town. We had to take the train to the west side of the city and then do some walking and a little searching to find them. We actually found another set of tiled steps called “The Secret Garden” first. Once we found the steps we followed them all the way to the top (you have to take a few more sets of stairs after the tiled steps end) where we found a small park that had beautiful views of the city and the Ocean. One side looks towards downtown and the other side looks to the Ocean. It was pretty cloudy the day we were up there, but I can only imagine how breathtaking the view must be on a clear day.

San Francisco Botanical Garden

The botanical garden is located in Golden Gate Park. It’s 55 acres of beautiful landscaped garden, streams, waterfalls, and Redwoods. It’s really peaceful and you could spend a whole day just walking around exploring. It’s also free on certain days of the month so be sure to check if any of those days fall during your trip.

Painted Ladies and Full House home

On the day we were set to leave while packing and figuring out how to get from our hotel to the Airport, I decided we had time to squeeze in one more adventure. I was looking up where the Full House house was in proximity to us and saw that the Painted Ladies were only a few blocks down and the house wasn’t too far from there. We finished packing and had just enough time to make it to both. We got to the Full House house to find that it is now painted a dark purple. It also has a gate blocking the front steps, I guess the homeowners got sick of people coming up the steps to take pictures. I don’t blame them, but you did buy the Full House house what did you expect? A few quick pictures and an Uber back to our hotel and we were on our way back to Orlando.

We made it back home safely with thoughts of how cool it would be to live in San Francisco! (PS we return home with the same thoughts from almost every trip!) My husband in the tech business and that area from San Francisco to San Jose would be a dream area for him. However the shock of the cost of living and what to do with our two houses in Central Florida (renting them out while living in California would probably drive me crazy!). The thoughts however slowly die off to dreams when we return to our little acre of no neighbors and two crazy pups that would never be able to be city dogs!

Until next time San Francisco!

** If you have any suggestions on things we should see/do on our next visit (because we will definitely be back!) leave me a comment and let me know!