San Fran - Part 4 (Last installment) :)

One night we found The Cheiftain, an Irish pub in the SOMA district. It was authentic Irish food, like fish and chips but a few very interesting things too.

One such interesting dish was this zucchini soup. (Yes, it's green) It was SOOO scrumptious! The Chieftain was a really good restaurant and really cool atmosphere.

You absolutely can't go to San Fran and not ride a cable car! We caught the cable car down near Ghirardelli Square and rode it all the way through town to Union Square.

Rob stood on the back and snapped pictures while Jacob and I sat safely inside. Ha! Yes, our cable car is about to meet the one in this picture. I really think you could reach out and touch the passing cable cars!

Jacob surprised by the camera! :)

This is a view looking back down the hill we had just come over

Union Square was about 2 blocks from our hotel, so needless to say, we spent LOTS of time there! :) They were starting to put the Christmas tree up in the middle of the park.

Lots of shopping!

Our last night we had sushi at a place called Sanraku. Jacob had been craving sushi all week and we finally found him some! It was YUMMO!!

Doesn't he look happy? I know I was! :)

I, of course, have LOTS more pictures but I don't want to bore you guys to death! San Francisco is a beautiful and fun city! We would love to go back and drive up into the vineyards....maybe someday! :)

San Fran Part 3 - Alcatraz

If you've ever been to San Francisco you know that Alcatraz is a MUST SEE! I've always been intrigued by Alcatraz and even more so after seeing it. We took a ferry over and this is what you see as you approach the island.

The shell of a building on top of the hill used to be the barracks where the guards lived. One thing I never realized before going to Alcatraz, was that guards and their families lived on this small island. While we were there, I just kept thinking how I could not imagine raising my family that close to a maximum security prison.

The lighthouse at Alcatraz

Our ferry ride over

One of the corridors of cells.
As you can see, the cells were TINY. On the left you can see two metal shelves, one being the table and one being a seat! On the right is the bed frame....the mattresses were about 3 inches thick!

This is the shower room. In the early days there were stalls but after some security issues it became just one big shower room!

Alcatraz also offers some of the best views of San Francisco. That's the Golden Gate Bridge behind us.

Notice the hilly streets of San Francisco behind us.

I have TONS of pictuers from Alcatraz but didn't want to go overboard on the blog. HA! It really was intriguing and SOOO interesting!

San Fran - Part 2 - Fisherman's Wharf, Pier 39, Ghirardelli Square

We also hit the classic tourist places, Fisherman's Wharf, Pier 39, and Ghirardelli Square. Fisherman's Wharf is an older part of town is lots of small restaurants, bars, and shops.

If you have seen these "toilets" before you know how funny they are. It looks a lot like a phone booth or something. They are public bathrooms and after each use they go through a 50-second self-cleaning cycle. I didn't use one, but as you can see Jacob experienced it. Too funny!

Pier 39 was also really neat! Lots of shopping and eating! The view of the Golden Gate Bridge from the pier.

That's Alcatraz behind us! (that post will come later)

We ate at Bubba Gumps....great food and awesome atmosphere (since it's southern based) :)

The sea lions at Pier 39 are so much fun to watch. I think we could have sat and watched them interact with each other all day! They are such funny animals!

So much fun to watch!


We also headed to Ghirardelli Square and got chocolate and ice cream! Yummy! I did not know that Ghirardelli was originally from San Fran!

More to come soon! Stay tuned!

San Francisco - Part 1

As most of you know, we spent last week in San Francisco. Rob had to go for a work conference so I tagged along (which I do for most of his work trips) and I took my brother, Jacob along as a companion. We had a great week sightseeing and taking in San Francisco. It only rained one day and the rest of the week was absolutely beautiful with the highs in the upper 60's and sunny!

We arrived in San Francisco and headed straight to our hotel which was located in the Soma District. We were in the middle of LOTS of shopping! (Yes, I was in heaven). We got to the hotel to watch the second half of the Bama/LSU game. BOO!!! We should have gone on to enjoy the city! :)

Our view out of our window....we were across the street from The Container Store (for those of you that know me well, you know how excited this made me), a 4-story Old Navy, and a huge Apple store. I was SO excited to see all of this right out of my window!


We asked some locals and chose to eat dinner at a swanky, local bar and restaurant called Anchor & Hope. It was DELISH and such a neat place. If you've ever been to San Fran, you know that there are TONS of small and very unusual eateries!

Rob had the Ahi Tuna, which was unbelievable!
I had the lobster roll on the brioche bun! SCRUMPTIOUS!

Rob also tried the beer sampler........I'm not a beer drinker but even some of these were good to me!

We took SO many pictures and I have SOOOO many things to share from our trip! I will probably have to blog our trip in 4 or 5 different posts! :) I'll leave you guys with these for now!

Adoption Auction!

Remember the auction started today over at Worthy of the Prize. There are some GREAT items up for bid so start your Christmas shopping now!

100% of the proceeds will be split between 18 adoptive families (we are one of them, YAY)!!! So PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE go bid on some items!!!!!!

Just click below! Bidding will continue until Sunday!