I am back from California and guess what, it wasn’t negative temperatures here in Colorado this time! When we came back from Mexico in November it was freeeezzzing for a few weeks. I read a forecast earlier today and tomorrow is suppose to be in the 50s…..people will probably be wearing t-shirts and shorts, it’ll feel that hot out after the weather we’ve had. I am definitely looking forward to this!
***Quick apology, I did not take any pictures while in San Francisco…if I can bum some off Nick & Shayla then I will post some! I definitely need to work on taking my camera places!
We had such a wonderful time in San Francisco. Four of us went including Donny, Nick, Shayla (Nick & Shayla are married as well) and myself. Donny works with both Nick & Shayla so they all went out to help with the food show and, of course, have a little fun as well.
We went wine tasting in Napa Valley on Thursday, ate a very nice dinner at a French restaurant called Bouchon, and still managed to make it back to the hotel and in bed by 8:30pm…that’s my kind of vacationing! Friday was a very busy day as well. We took a ferry out to Alcatraz and toured it for a few hours. I thought it would be pretty cool and it completely exceeded my expectations. It was so amazing! We did an audio tour through the prison and they did such a good job putting that together. They used old guards and prisoners to voice the tour and had a lot of interesting facts about the building and the inmates. Totally worth your time and money in my opinion.
After our tour, we grabbed a quick bite to eat and then went to Muir Woods. Muir Woods is a National Park and if you haven’t been there then I also suggest going there. I went 5 years ago when I was in California and I was very happy to return. It is quite the peaceful place and redwoods are so amazing. The forest is made up of redwoods and clover….that is basically what I can identify with zero education in anything nature-related. Regardless, it’s beautiful and peaceful so if you can fit it into your trip then absolutely do it.
Saturday we went to the farmer’s market down at the Ferry Terminal. Amazing. I love farmer’s markets and this one is huge! We spent an hour or two down there and then set up the guy’s booth for the food show. They recently bought a new show display and it looked awesome. Very professional!
The food show was so fun. We had about four hours to walk around to check things out before the Broncos game starts (sad day for the Broncos, but I still love them!). I wish we would have had more time to walk around because honestly, four hours was not enough. There is so much see! There was a “What’s Hot” & “What’s New” section that had showcases of new up-and-coming products. Let’s just say that bacon is huge this next year and also adding protein to foods that wouldn’t normally have protein (aka chips, etc). Obviously gluten-free everything was available, but that didn’t surprise me at all. I’ll go over a few cool products and interesting things that I saw while I was there in another post.
For some reason Sunday night I was craving dim sum. I rarely, I mean rarely, crave Asian cuisine but for some reason all I could think about were soup dumplings! We looked up a place online and it turned out to be incredible. We stuffed our faces with hot and sour soup, soup dumplings, mu shu chicken, pot stickers, these pork buns that were pan fried really quick so make a super crisp crust on the bottom….oh dear. It took care of that craving no doubt. Incredible. We ordered so much food it was ridiculous. I am going to brag just a little bit here…this was a legit Asian restaurant. So much so, that they did not even offer to bring you a fork. I am NOT great at using chopsticks and I managed just fine in this situation! It certainly didn’t stop me from overindulging….. just a little bit…. Even Donny commented on how well I was doing! Wonderful food and getting better with chopsticks: success. We ate dinner pretty early that night and were back to our beds by 7:30pm. Again, that’s my kind of vacation! It was nice to just relax the rest of the night.
Shayla & I flew out Monday. Our flight was at 12:30pm so we all four woke up, ate a fantastic breakfast at a local restaurant, and then we parted ways….Shayla & I to the airpoirt, the boys back to the food show for Day #2. We got there really early only to find out fairly quickly that our flight was delayed. We ended up having to waste time at the airport for 4 hours…not fun but we managed! Made it home, picked up the very anxious Sir Douglas and then went home. I wasn’t very tired so I ended up unpacking and getting everything put away before bed. Sometimes it takes me a while to get that dang bag unpacked!
I think I hit most the highlights of the trip without boring you about every. Single. Meal. We ate. If you want restaurant suggestions for San Francisco then let me know. We found quite a few gems!
Have you been to San Francisco? If so, how was it?!
