SF Day 1 Part 1 | One Day at a Time

Continued from Napa Day 2.

The beauty of the baby waking up early is that it’s never a worry that we’ll wake up too late in the morning for when the day calls for an early start. I don’t remember precisely but the baby woke us up a little later this morning, probably closer to 4am. Funny to say, but we appreciated that…

By 5:30am, we are on the road and it’s pretty wet outside. The weather is supposed to get even more rainy later today and tomorrow while we are in San Francisco. We hoped for sunny weather, but we’ll just have to make the best of it.

All the commuters heading into the city. The rain also cleared up just for a bit.

There’s the famous bridge. Almost into SF now.

Right before crossing the bridge, we saw that there was a scenic overlook. It took us up a hill for an epic view. PL was asleep in her car seat, so RL stayed behind in the car with her while me, DH, and BH took a quick walk up the trail to get a better view.

Sunrise over the Golden Gate with SF in the background. Pretty awesome.

The prebridge, I guess that’s what you would call it.

Time to head back to the car.

I had prepaid the tolls when I rented the car, perhaps not the most financially beneficial option, but definitely the easiest option. Tolls only apply going into the city and not on the way out. It’s 6:40am, hopefully we’ll beat most of the morning traffic while was traverse the city.

Driving through Golden Gate Park.

The sun is out, let’s see how long this will last. Heading to SFO to drop off The Dick.

Back at the car rental garage in SFO, this is goodbye for The Dick. Definitely appreciated the extra room onboard for the past two days. We had to make it by 10am to avoid the penalty of another whole day of rental fees. Got it dropped off by 7:21am, all thanks to the baby for her super early wake up times.

Just like mama.

First to the Airtrain, then connect to the dreaded BART.

It may be dry now, but the rain is definitely coming soon.

The dreaded BART. It’s been known to leave paper bags of burning shit on porches.

The worst possible ticket machine in the world. It’s been known to cause diarrhea and constipation…at the same time!

I tried to purchase 4 tickets. It refused. I tried another credit card, it refused again. I tried to purchase 2 tickets, it finally accepted. I tried to purchase 2 more tickets again with that same credit card, refused. So finally I had to use another credit card to purchase 2 more tickets. WTF BART. The most finicky system ever for no good fucking reasons at all. FUCK YOU BART!!

The BART has been known to give you paper cuts then rubs salt in it.

Sorry baby that you are going on the BART.

No one is happy being on the BART. The BART sucks all happiness out of life.

On the way into the city, my in laws looked outside of the BART’s dead, depressing grey windows and commented that San Francisco looked like a “third world country” with all the small row houses stacked on top of each other built into the hillside. Small shitty row houses that costs 1000x more than their actual third world country equivalent though.

Yes!! Free from the BART!! FREEDOM!!!!!

Cable car turnaround. Zero waiting line even at 8:30am, I’ve never seen this before.

We loved their pastries last time we were here. Their sit down service left everything to be desired though. Gotta get one of their pastries before we leave SF.

Found our hotel. Only a little bit over 10 minutes of walking from the BART station.

Liking the decor in here.

Small 4 person elevator. Lucky us, despite it being not even 10am and check in isn’t usually until 3pm, they had one room for us. That’s nice, at least we can establish some kind of home base while waiting for the other room to open up later.

Happy to be out of her carrier…maybe.

First order of business is to finish the bottle of wine that we had opened yesterday in Napa. Still tastes good, but I am no wine connoisseur.

Pretty good sized room for SF. This is what $185 a night gets you in a great location in SF. Surprising that this costs less than our hotel in Napa.

Got a handicapped access room, and it’s got a GIANT restroom. Too bad our sink area is still pretty small though. Still, will be nice to be able to open and dry the umbrellas in here.

Window looks out onto the ass end of the building, but this is perfect. It’ll be quieter for us and the baby to sleep.

Diaper changed and happy. Just like our hotel in Napa, our SF hotel also provided us with a pack and play to use as a baby crib.

The weather does not look pretty. Also, I realized that the white balance on my camera goes way off sometimes when I take a doppler radar photo on my phone.

Despite what the doppler shows, it’s not quite raining yet…but it’ll be soon. Must head out of door before the rain comes.

Breakfast spot right around the corner.

Giant portions.

Sure enough, it started pouring rain outside during breakfast. This place went from pretty empty to almost completely full once it started raining.

After breakfast they gave us a token to use on this slot machine to try to win some sort of prize.

We did not win.

Back to the hotel after breakfast to wait for the weather to clear up some and also for some rest. Traveling with a baby is exhausting, even with 4 pairs of hands on deck all taking turns entertaining this little thing.

Still raining by the time we decided to head out. It doesn’t seem like the rain will get any better than this for a while, just have to bite the bullet and go for it.

I am carrying the baby, so I get the biggest umbrella out of the bunch. DB and BH had brought two cheap umbrellas and one broke already, so this giant umbrella was bought locally at the corner Walgreens. I brought two expensive umbrellas with me on this trip, one which I’ve had for about 10 years, and the other one for about 20. Both are still working at the moment, and let’s hope that they’ll last this trip.

Let’s go!

Accordion! He wasn’t very good though…

At bus stop, fortunately did not have to wait long and there was a little bus stop shelter for us to wait at as well.

Haha, Zzzzzzz.

Why is it that we always accidentally match? For what it’s worth, I had this yellow shirt on since last night, so RL was the one who copied me this morning.

Oh no, towards the end of our ride, we realized that someone had left their luggage behind by accident. We notified the driver, hopefully it’s not a bomb…

Out by the water, short walk to Fisherman’s Wharf. This weather sucks, RL and DH’s shoes are both soaked. On the other hand, BH and my shoes are still pretty dry. It’s all about having the correct footwear!