Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

After we parted ways in the airport the kids and I took one of the longest and quietest Uber rides ever while Jacob waited it out for the second flight. We eventually arrived at our Airbnb about 15 minutes ahead of the Indian food I ordered for dinner and 45 minutes ahead of the groceries. It’s a wonderful time to be alive. Jacob on the other hand didn’t have as easy of an evening. After he collected his luggage (they forced him to check it), the van and the dog he had a 6 hour drive in the rain before he could call it an evening. Luckily he made it and crawled into bed around 2:30.

We only had a few days in San Francisco so we tried to find a balance between getting some rest after our air travel fun and also getting to see a city that I’ve been looking forward to for years. We hunkered down at home for the first day catching up on work, school and rest and then played tourist for the other days.

We headed into downtown to do the lonely planets “San Francisco essentials” walking route. We managed to see most of the sights despite the on again off again rain. We made it through Chinatown, a fun bookstore, a park and up some crazy hills. By the time we made it back to the car the rain cleared up completely and we drove to the other highlights – including the full house house and haight—ashbury neither of which the kids understood.

We didn’t want to leave the Bay Area without a visit to Alcatraz. We made it to our ferry with minutes to spare and set sail for the rather dreary and somewhat creepy island. They do a really great audio tour that we took advantage of. There was much debate amongst the kids on when to hit pause or play on each of the sections but other than that it was very engaging.

And of course, we couldn’t say goodbye without getting a good look at the Golden Gate Bridge – which is in fact orange not gold. They have dozens of employees whose job is to constantly apply a thousand of gallons of paint a week to keep it looking tip top. After we snapped our photos we took a trip across and ended our time in San Francisco.

We really only scratched the surface here and just sampled a couple of the highlights. I really enjoyed the city and would definitely like to spend some more time here. We also found the end of a rainbow, so that’s definitely got to mean something, right?