okaybee

We made it. I don’t know how we did it. But we made it to the end of our little road trip. San Francisco.

From Las Vegas, to Los Angeles, to Yosemite, and now San Francisco. Our poor Dodge had been through it all with us, but it was time to send back our rental and explore San Francisco ourselves.

We got up early to head to San Francisco (standard us), as we had to get Eimear and Aine to San Francisco by 1pm as they had to be on a tour boat to Alcatraz by 1.30. We were doing so well for time until we got to the tolls. Thirteen lanes of traffic. Basically at a standstill. Fast forward to the girls needing to change in the public bathroom of our hotel, accidentally smashing a giant bottle of wine, getting their taxi to race through San Francisco traffic and making their tour with seconds to spare. Lovely relaxing morning for them.

For the rest of us, we decided to do the bus tour. The good thing about the bus tour is it’s a 24 hour ticket, so we could use it from 3pm one day, to 3pm the following day, which is exactly what we did.

I’m sure most of you know this, but the weather in San Francisco is bizarre. One minute on the open top bus tour, it was sunny, sunglasses on, no need for jackets. The next minute we were shrouded in fog, unable to see the road ahead of us and shivering in our jackets. I’m from Ireland where we notoriously get some four seasons in one day at times, but this was insane even for me. If you’re going to San Francisco, just be prepared for every type of weather known to man, and you should be fine.

We stayed on the bus tour for a while, going over the Golden Gate Bridge and back again. I will say, that first day, we didn’t get the best part of the bus tour. I don’t know if it’s because we were so tired, but we weren’t really feeling the trip around the city. We went wandering around the shops after a coffee pick me up, and headed back to the hotel with full intentions to get changed and meet the girls for a drink.

In reality, we got back to the hotel room, put on pyjamas, took off our make up, made ourselves a little feast on a bed with hummus and crisps, and I showed the girls some of my favourite beauty YouTubers. It’s not glamorous, but it was so fun. We clearly had just run out of steam and needed a night where we did nothing. We had been full steam ahead now for so many days, it was nice to just chill out, chat and relax.

The next day though, we woke up ready to go. Eimear had figured out that there was a San Francisco Giants baseball game on that day, and got us tickets to go along. We wanted to finish the bus tour first, so the three of us headed off to finish that before meeting back up with the girls.

We headed to Boudin Bakery for our lunch. Oh my god. The place is just a maze of queues. Queues to order, queues to collect, queues to sit down, queues to buy loaves of bread. It’s constantly packed. The food was so good, don’t get me wrong. But it’s kind of hard to enjoy your food when you’ve basically had to wrestle to get it, and then there’s people hovering near your table, waiting to pounce on your free seat when you’re done. My advice, try to avoid peak times here, and definitely avoid weekends, but go for the amazing food.

Afterwards, we headed down to AT&T park to meet the girls and watch the game. It was a stunning sunny day, and so nice to sit out with a drink in the sunshine on the last full day of our trip. That’s one thing I love about American sports, they’re a day event, not over in a flash. Meaning you can sit there for hours with your friends, especially with a sport like baseball, which allows you to easily chat with friends while also keeping an eye on what’s going on.

We knew the final thing that we wanted to do together in San Francisco was walk over the Golden Gate Bridge and go to Sausalito, a small town on the other side of the bridge, for dinner. Remember how I said earlier that it was a stunning sunny day? Yeah, not at the bridge. That mist is no joke you guys. We quickly threw on our coats and started walking. The walk itself doesn’t take long at all, but we hadn’t factored in the walk the other side.

When a friend told me about Sausalito, he told me to cycle the Golden Gate, and then continue on to Sausalito. So I presumed there would be a safe trail for us to walk the 45 minutes to Sausalito. I presumed wrong. We more or less walked along a motorway for 45 minutes. No path, no nothing. (Sorry Mom & Dad). It was ridiculous, and super dangerous, so I’m not condoning it in anyway. Just know that it’s next to impossible to get a taxi on the other side of that bridge, trust me we tried to Uber for ages (an omen for the end of the evening). So if you’re going to go, cycle or drive it.

Anyway, after walking along the motorway for 45 minutes and us all wondering if we were actually mad, and how we continually get ourselves into these situations, we ended up in Sausalito. I have to say, it’s a gorgeous town, I’m so glad we made the walk over. First of all, we were out of the mist and not completely frozen anymore, but we also found ourselves at a lovely little place called Bar Bocce. There were people sat around a fire pit, looking out at the water, gorgeous pizzas coming out of the kitchen on platters, people laughing and sipping on rosé. It was just want we wanted for our last night.

After several hours there drinking lots of rosé and prosecco, we decided to head to another bar for a night cap before heading back. We wandered outside where a member of staff quickly came running after me with my passport. It had somehow fallen out of my bag at dinner. We then looked for a bar, but the only one that was open wasn’t really our scene. And to be honest, we were kind of tired after the long day.

We tried to Uber. No dice. We looked for a bus. From the timetable it looked like either the last one had already gone, or it would be another hour. We went into a hotel. Nope, you wouldn’t get a taxi to go over the bridge. Ok. So we were stranded. We started walking and met locals who advised us to keep trying for an Uber until we got one. That was all well and good, but Laura was the only one whose data was working, and she was also the one with the lowest battery…

One battery pack, an attempt to hack into wifi and a race after a bus later, we had finally got ourselves a taxi. The driver was called Laurence and did Uber on the side as he was a masseuse. Queue a very uncomfortable taxi ride home with Laurence telling us how creepy CEOs are in Silicon Valley. Gross.

The next morning, we were all getting flights at different times. I decided to head to Blue Bottle coffee, as my cousins wife told me it was incredible and I needed to go. Danielle was 100% correct by the way, it was incredible. I then headed for the airport where I flew to Paris, had a 6 hour lay over and got back home at crazy o’clock. Fun.

There were a tonne of places that were recommended to me in San Francisco in terms of food to go to, but there’s only so many hours in a day! If you want to check out these places, then just save my USA Restaurants List to your Google Maps. There’s a buttload (technical term) of places in San Francisco alone, and I’m always updating as I hear of new places around the US. Let me know if you try any of them!

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