We Might Not Be Back: San Francisco

On day one of the relaxing urban part of our vacation we headed to Yerba Buena and the Children’s Creativity Museum. City Passes seem to make lots of museums opt out of reciprocal relationships much to my dismay. Luckily this place is still part of ACM and so we went for free. The girls LOVED it. I kind of thought we’d never escape. Lottie was able to make a music video. She sand Do You Want to Build a Snowman, of course. They both made prototypes out of junk. Then they made clay figures which could’ve been used for a stop motion animated film. At that point though we had to pull them away. We headed to the super cool park right next to the museum. Once again they had to be dragged away. Then we made them take a very short walk through part of the Castro and Mission before we had to find food. I wish we’d gotten suggestions for where to get the best tacos because the place we chose in desperation was only so-so. After that it was quitting time.

The next day we headed to Fisherman’s wharf to see the sea lions and eat chowder in bread bowls. We also stopped by Musee Mechanique because we love all things free. The games housed in this collection are crazy! I could’ve spent hundreds in quarters checking out the totally bizarre machines. Luckily we had other things to fit in, so I got away with only spending like a dollar. We moved onto the Maritime Museum and ranger badge number 5. Sadly the actual boats were closed off but we were able to go through the museum and answer questions to get the books done. After that we foolishly though we’d hop on a cable car. Last time we were in San Francisco it was in February. The difference in crowds in peak season versus off season are out of this world. Also with the city pass you get a muni pass, so everyone had tickets. Last time we were able to hop on and off the cable cars anytime. This time we would’ve had to wait over an hour. We opted to pass and try again earlier the next day. Instead we got back on the street car to head for home with the promise of ice cream at Smitten for the second time. We had the misfortune of sitting between an ignorant tourist and some individuals who clearly had mental health issues. I wanted to knock the ignorant woman out for almost starting an argument with the gentleman behind me over her rude son’s staring problem. I digress...

Our last day in the city we made the cable car our first stop. This time we got on right away for our obligatory ride. The very nice car operator gave us tips for how to easily get to the Golden Gate Bridge with our munipass, so we hopped off at the top of a hill and caught a bus. We then met another lovely woman who gave us further directions so we could get right to the bridge. The skies couldn’t have been more clear so naturally we and every other out of towner were there snapping pictures. After that we headed back to fisherman’s wharf yet again for more chowder and some crab sandwiches. We then caught the bus to Coit tower because we had a couple more things to cross of the list. We didn’t actually wait in line to go up. We just enjoyed the view from outside and the murals inside. After that we were pretty done, but yet we pressed on and headed out to Ocean Beach for our last evening. It was well worth it and we were pretty sad we hadn’t gone there earlier. It was beautiful. We as usual stayed out a little past our prime and nearly starved the girls, so we stopped for pizza by the slice on the way home.

Swinging at the park across from the Painted Ladies. Not a bad view in the background.

Once more "must-see" checked off the list.

This one is bigger than the capitol in Washington

I wish we'd said we wanted the DVD. She could see herself on the screen with a Frozen scene in the background. Gabby said she's an artist not a singer and declined to participate.