San Fransisco Part 1

San Francisco- Spring Break = all 10 days in Sharon detail with pictures so this might take a while. Read at will. :)

Saturday- Hotel, muni pass, Japan Town, Juban dinner, Easter vigil

John and I met in the San Francisco airport on Saturday and then quickly learned how to use the public transit in the area to get to our hotel. Everything went well and we got to our place just fine. It was a small little place with a lot of character. One our way we stopped to get our Muni Passes which are the traveling passes to ride all the public transit in San Fran. At this same place we picked up a bunch of brochures to browse because we actually didn’t have much of a plan for the week. :) We had just planned on winging it and everything actually turned out perfect!

Once we checked into our hotel and settled in we got dressed to go to church. We walked to The Cathedral of St. Mary’s which was in Japan Town. We had planned on going to Easter vigil but really didn’t know what time it started. We walked there between 5 and 6 hoping that we would make it. When we got there all the doors were locked and there was no information about any sort of mass. Oh no! But luckily there was a man there who told us what time the vigil started. It was at 8:30. This left us with a few hours to kill so we decided to walk around Japan Town and find some dinner.

There were all sorts of restaurants but the one we liked the best was called Juban. It was a Yakiniku BBQ type restaurant. We had no idea what kind of food it was but that was the fun part. It was going to be something new to try. J It was a really get experience! The way it works is that you order a kind of meat and they bring it out to you raw. It’s been marinated already but you have to cook it. There is a small grill in the middle of the table for you to place the meat (it’s not like a George Forman or your typical outdoor grill). It’s very small and has a gasoline fire underneath. Your only flip the meat once and then dip it in the sauce to cool and then you eat it! We ordered beef loin and it actually tasted pretty good. I’m not really a big meat person but I know some people such as my dad, Paul, and Chris who would have loved it! I couldn’t finish my plate of meat but it was fun to do the grilling right at the table and to try grilling some of the vegetables too.

After our “Easter dinner” we went to mass. Inside the church was beautiful! The lights were all turned low so it made the stain glass stand out even more with the sun setting. John and I both thought it had to be a relative of the St. John’s Abby with the tiles on the floor, the stain glass, the cement slabs, and everything. It just had the same sort of feel. We thought maybe it was the same architect or at least had something to do with Brauer. But after looking it up we couldn’t find any connection. Bummer :)

The vigil was quite long as tradition. We were there for 2 hours with 4 readings! Oof! It was tough for both of us to stay awake especially for John who woke up at 4am to get his flight and then on top of that was technically still on Minnesota time which was 2 hours a head. Poor guy! :) He was a trooper and made it through the whole thing. The mass was beautiful. My favorite part was when they turned on the lights half way through to signify the resurrection. When the lights came on, it lit up this entire art piece hanging from the center of the church. There were all these hanging silver pieces that shimmered in the light. It was so pretty!

Here are some of the pictures of inside the church. This a view from outside the church.

This is the stain glass your see as you are leaving the church.

This is the best picture we could get of the stain glass above the church and of the silver hanging piece. You can only see part of it in the lower left hand corner.

After mass we walked back to the hotel and headed straight for bed. We were exhausted! :)

Rainy day Sunday- lost our first muni pass, Lombard Street, Cable Cars and museum, Fisherman’s Warf, Ghirardelli Square and factory, Boudin’s Bakery, clam chowder bowl, sourdough bread, pizza and a Redbox

This day we slept in just until last call for continental breakfast. We needed the sleep. :) When we got up and going we found out that it was raining outside which changed our game plan for the day. We also had to make some adjustments because John lost his Muni pass after not even a day so we had to go back and buy a new one. :) What a way to start, huh? Since it was the weekend and we knew it would be pretty busy everywhere with tourist we thought we’d hit up all the land mark things that did require admission. We headed out to Fisherman’s Warf. We took our first cable car ride there. It was pretty fun!

This is John and I ready for our day in the rain. Your options are to get wet or get wet. :)

Here’s John sitting on the cable car.

This is me hanging out of the car like they do in the movies.

Along the way we stopped to check out Lombard Street. It was pretty cool, but I can’t imagine living on this street and having to drive this road everyday. I think my brakes would give out. You can only go 5 mph and when you look at the hair pin turns you’ll know why! :)

Here is a picture of John and I trying to take a picture of ourselves with street in the background. Nice picture, but no street. :)

We continued on our way to Fisherman’s Warf to hit up a few of the favorite spots. We first went to Ghiradelli Square to check out the factory. It was fun to look at the shop and see all of the things you could get made of chocolate.

Here’s me licking my lips for chocolate outside the shop.

This is John posing in front of the fountain with the naked mermaids. I think he has a thing for naked mermaids?

After sampling some chocolate we started to get hungry so we went to Boudin’s Bakery to get lunch. Here they are known for their sourdough bread and their clam chowder bread bowls. And what sounds better on a cold rainy but a warm bowl of soup. Mmm…mm…good! It was very packed in the bakery with other people with the same idea and trying to stay dry but we found a table and enjoyed our lunch.

This is one of the bakers creating an alligator out of the sourdough. They made all sort of shapes and things out of the sourdough. Pretty much anything you could image! It was great! Pose for the picture!

We road the cable car back to our hotel and made a couple stops along the way. We stopped at the Cable Car Museum which was really neat. I would highly recommend going here to anyone! It was free and it answered a lot of questions of the history of the cable cars and how they work. It was cool!

On our way back to the hotel it started to really pour and we both got drenched running for car to building to bus. We didn’t really feel like going out anymore so we stopped to get a Redbox movie and ordered in pizza to finally dry out from a very wet day.

Even though this was the a pretty gross day, we were really blessed with weather to only get a couple rainy days for our whole trip and to get them at pretty good times.

Monday- Golden Gate Park, Japanese Tea Garden, Botanical Garden, Sharon Meadow and Building, Lefty O’Doul’s- corn beef and pastrami plus the Final Four play off game

We woke up this day to find the sunshine after the rain so we decided to take full advantage of it! We planned to hit up the gardens and be outside as much as we could! We headed straight to Golden Gate Park. This is the largest park in San Francisco. It’s basically the only patch of green you’ll find in the city (not really, but pretty close). The park was huge and beautiful! I couldn’t help take a ton of pictures. Enjoy!

This one is for mom. She loves sundials. Looks picturesque huh? This is were we had our Panini picnic lunch.

I thought this one was just pretty. :)

This is John walking around the Japanese Tea Garden which is inside the Golden Gate Park.

This was in the Japanese Tea Garden it was a giant Zen Garden.

This is John and I in the Japanese Tea Garden.

The ponds and walking paths were just gorgeous! The Botanical Garden had such crazy plants I had never seen before. Dad would have loved to see and try to identify all of the exotic plants.

These are my favorite flowers of the trip. They were all in bloom and ALL over San Fran. Does anyone know their name? Mom, do you like the white?

After walking around all of those gardens we decided to take a nap in MY meadow. There is in fact a place in Golden Gate Park that is called Sharon Meadow. Sweet, I know! We went there to relax and listen to some musicians playing in the park.

Here’s me standing next to MY building in MY meadow. Awesome!

The building is an art studio that offers community art classes for all ages. My name is so sweet!

John wanted to watch the Final Four basketball game so we decided to find a place for dinner where we could watch it. We went into a place called Lefty O’Doul’s. It was bar style restaurant with meat and potato kind of Irish food. John tried the corn beef and I tried the pastrami. It was pretty good. They cut the meat right off the slab and put it on your plate. (Dad you would have loved it!) After dinner we went back to the hotel to finish the game and rest up for another busy day of walking the city.

More to come once I write it! To be continued...