A bit of an unusual start to our summer road trip this year in that we didn't start it as a family. Our summer began with our annual trip to Prince George. After we got home I packed again for a trip to San Diego to attend a week long conference. The plan was for the family to drive to Oliver to drop off Oliver and then drive to San Francisco to meet me. This meant they had a three day, 2000 km drive while I had a 1 hour flight to get to our meeting place at the hotel in San Francisco. I had no complaints.
I arrived in San Francisco at 8:00a and had about 5 hours to kill while I waited for the family to arrive from Klammath Falls, Oregon where they had stayed the night. Did I mention that I had spent the night watching fireworks from my hotel room while they spent the night listening to what may have been fireworks or gun shots from their hotel room. They're still not sure. Again, no complaints from me.
Our first destination was the trolley cars. As soon as I guided the family to the parking for the hotel I ran the five blocks to grab tickets and get in line. In hindsight I completely forgot about the trick for the trolley cars. There is a starting point where everyone lines up but they never fill the cars because you can hop on and hop off at stops along the way. This means that you can either wait in line for an hour or just get on at the second stop with almost no wait. We did get a seat which is nice and we did use the time to catch up on stories about our trip so far.
The trolley cars take us through the steep hills of San Francisco and end up at Fisherman's Wharf. Our first destination was Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory.where we got in line for sundaes. A few additional tourist tips here include the fact that there are multiple entrances to the factory with varying line sizes. I also recommend sharing the desserts. Even through we were very hungry and I can usually hold my own with ice cream, there was plenty to share. Kerry and Callie had the salted caramel sundae and Carter and I had the cookies and cream.
Another tourist tip is that even when it's nice out San Francisco is not always the warmest of places. I'm not sure why, but Kerry and the kids all chose not to wear their jackets. Luckily there was a tourist shop at the end of Fisherman's what where they had clothing on sale for 70% off. Carter got a jacket and shared it with Kerry. As a bonus the jacket even came with four Ghirardelli chocolates in the pocket. It was also missing a button. We're not sure what the history of this jacket is but we think it has an interesting story.
By this time it was close to dinner so we started looking for a place to eat on the wharf. I had previously gone to Lou's Fish Shack and Kerry liked what she saw on the menu so we stopped in for dinner. I don't know if I can truly recognize fresh versus frozen fish but if this was never frozen I could tell. Best fish and chips ever. The breading was light and the fish was sweet and flaky. Kerry had the crab bisque bread bowl and loved it as well. It was at this point that the family realized why I had recommended we add San Francisco to the itinerary this year.
After dinner we continued on down Fisherman's Wharf to Pier 45. There is a great penny arcade there with machines ranging from the 1800's to the 1980's. I broke a five into quarters to give the kids and soon realized that I have perhaps made them too money savvy. They seemed content to pocket their money. We did get them to try a few items including laughing Sally. Carter tried waiting for someone else to activate her but could wait no longer. She was really quite frightening. We also had a fun time with the telescope for 25 cents. Carter said it was broken because all he could see was blue. I helped him turn away from the water so he could see Alcatraz.
We finished our trip down the wharf with Pier 39. It's mostly restaurants and souvenir shops though we did have fun checking out the sea lions. Apparently they can have 1,500 later in the year. We saw a few dozen sunning them selves on some specially made docks just for them. We also checked out the pet store where we were amazed to find Schnoodle merchandise. You know you've picked a trendy dog breed when there is signage and socks for sale with Schnoodle on them.
The trolley cars are $7.00 per person one way so we found a cheaper way back to our hotel via bus. Kerry managed to make friends with the bus driver and got all sorts of advise and local knowledge sent her way. We stopped off a few blocks from our hotel at Union Square which appeared to be getting a major overhaul.
Our first day together as a family was great fun. Only one more day of travel until our final destination in Anaheim.
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