This past New Year's each of us wrote a list with goals and aspirations for the coming year. I believe that when you vocalize your dreams they start to come true. And Julia's list included going to Glass Beach (located in Fort Bragg, CA) while Andrew and my lists included prioritizing family vacations. Well, shortly after we made those lists, Andrew found out that he would be attending a work conference in San Francisco in May. Perfect!
San Francisco is one of my favorite cities and it's a relatively short drive to Glass Beach from there. So our first big family vacation in a while was born! The kids and I would spend a few days exploring the city while Andrew attended the conference and then we all would head north to see the redwoods and sea glass.
We left very early on a Monday morning. Our flight took-off at 5:40am necessitating a 3:30 wake-up! ugh. We arrived at the airport groggy but excited. The flights were uneventful and we arrived in San Francisco around lunchtime, headed to the hotel, and went out to find some lunch and explore. The kids were thrilled to finally see the cable cars in person and to have a familiar first lunch at Chipotle (something old, something new!).
After a short nap we headed back out for dinner but we needed some way to keep us all awake until a reasonable bedtime so we found an unusual spot. UrbanPutt. An indoor miniature golf course and restaurant. It was in the Mission district about 20 minutes from our hotel but well worth the drive! We all loved it. Each hole was innovative - there were earthquakes, skeeball, a wooden maze, a Rube Goldberg contraption, a submarine, and even a musical hole! It was the ideal destination for our golf lovers and the food was good too.
We also had an extra treat when we found out that Andrew's conference didn't start in full until Wednesday which meant that he could accompany us on our adventures the next day.
We did manage to keep the kids (and us) awake until about 8. Ben woke up at 3:30am but did very well staying in bed and resting and Andrew and Julia slept through til 5 or so.
We started our day heading to the west of the city to see the Pacific and to take a stroll along the beach (because nothing else was open yet!).
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| Ready for CA! |
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| It's the other ocean! |
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| North end of Ocean Beach |
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| Windy but clear and sunny skies! |
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| I loved the wildflowers - a result of the rain they have finally gotten after 5 years of drought |
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| this cutie adopted us on the beach for a bit |
From the beach we hopped on a bus to Golden Gate Park and the Academy of Sciences. Hits of the Science museum were the albino alligator, the rainforest exhibit complete with exotic butterflies, and the penguins (although their enclosure did make me a little sad). After some lunch we stretched our legs with a walk over the children's playground where Ben and Julia tried out the concrete slides and took a ride on the carousel.
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| wheeee!!! children's playground slides |
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| carousel #1 |
At that point we had pretty much reached our limit for the day! One more bus ride and we were back at our hotel. Andrew and Julia picked up Indian takeout for our dinner while Ben and I relaxed with a Pokemon game and refreshments in the lobby.
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| Pokemon happy hour! |
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