Once you land at the airport in SF, you realize it's not exactly close to city center. You can take a cab, which I believe Naomi said ran about $40 for a 20ish minute ride, or you can take the subway which will run you about $7.00. The ride is a bit longer, I believe it took me around 30 minutes, but it was much more economical.
After I met up with Naomi (whom I hadn't seen in almost a year!) we started exploring. We left our bags at her hotel, walked down to Union Square (above), grabbed lunch to go and jumped on a cable car ($5.00 one way). We headed over to Lombard Street but realized we took the route that started at the bottom. So we walked. And we walked uphill. A lot. It was extremely tiring, and we took lots of breaks, but we finally made it.
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Started from the bottom now we're here
After taking a lot of pictures and almost getting hit by a few cars, we attempted to get to the Golden Gate Bridge. I say 'attempted' because it took us nearly an hour to find the correct bus route (some don't go all the way to bridge, it's quite confusing, and this is coming from someone who takes the bus to work every day in DC). Luckily, a very helpful Marriott concierge pointed us in the right direction and we were officially on our way. Once on the bus ($2.00 for unlimited rides within two hours) we headed to the bridge. It was oddly bright and sunny that day, so there was no fog surrounding the bridge which I was secretly hoping for. We took our photos, hung around a bit, and then hoped back on the bus back downtown.
It was very windy and a bit cold, but worth it for this view.
Since we had to pick up our car no later than 6:00pm, we headed to Alamo Rent A Car, filled out our paperwork, got our awesome Charger, and headed to find the houses from Full House. I grew up watching this show and loving it, so I was thrilled to see a piece of the show in real life. I gave Naomi the quick run down (it doesn't air very often in Belgium) and after 10 minutes of searching for parking (I can't parallel park) we finally got to the park where the opening sequence was shot. I even made friends with a cute bulldog pup named Stella. Her owners were weird and kept trying to get us to go clubbing with them, but she was a sweetheart and stole my heart. She was also wearing a cone of shame and kept running into us.
"Everywhere you look..."
After parting with Stella, we jumped in the car and officially started the road trip. Our first stop, other than SF, was Taco Bell. I wish I were kidding but I'm absolutely not. In Pacifica, California, there is a Taco Bell that is located on the beach. I'm talking literally in the sand. You can walk up in your wet suit with your surfboard and order a crunch wrap supreme from the window out back. It's on the beach. And since it was only 20 minutes from downtown SF, we obviously had to see it. It's incredible.
Taco Bell. ON THE BEACH. I told you I wasn't kidding.
Our first night was to be spent in Santa Cruz, which was about an hour and twenty minute drive from SF. The PCH starts almost immediately after San Francisco, so we were already getting to see some absolutely amazing views of the sunset along the coast. We arrived in Santa Cruz somewhere around 9-10:00pm and checked into America's Best Value Inn & Suites. Check in was easy so we showered, uploaded our photos from that day to Instagram and went to bed.
I was all kinds of stoked, clearly.
Next: Santa Cruz to Monterey.
XO,
Casey
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