After the A's games and Napa trip, our funds are running a little low so we thought it would be a great weekend to find a low-cost activity. We decided that we should venture over to the other side of the bay to explore San Francisco by foot. We've both been there before, but never together. We decided to take the BART to the Powell station in SF so that we would get off the train next to all of the stores and the "downtown" area. The ride from our place was great - we estimated that it took about 25-30 minutes total. Also, the round-trip price for riding the BART to SF was just $6.60. That's not bad! Once we got off the train we just decided to walk around for the day and see where we ended up. (**Quick note - if you click on any of the photos in this post, you can see them in a larger size)
Generally neither of us cares much for doing the "touristy" things. Anything considered a tourist attraction or anything that seems even remotely commercial is a turn-off most of the time...but today we ignored those feelings and became certified tourists...mostly because we really didn't know what else to do besides all of the things we've heard of from travel books, etc! So we started off on Powell Street, which has a ton of great shopping. It was very crowded, so the crowd combined with the fact that we basically have no money at this point was a good reason to stay out of the shops. We did stop by the Niketown store for a few minutes though, which was really cool because they had all of the Olympic displays out. The Olympics are just six days away! I CAN'T WAIT!!!
After Niketown we headed in the direction of Chinatown. Both of us had been here before so we didn't stop in any stores or anything, but it did provide a great chance for some picture-taking. There were even Olympic banners hanging on the streets written in Chinese, which was pretty neat to see since the Olympics are in Beijing this year. After we made our way through Chinatown we continued on some quieter city streets, which was really my favorite part of the day. San Francisco is a beautiful city and I love all of the hilly streets and looking at the old buildings, imagining the occupations and lives of the people who live in them, etc.
Next up we found ourselves at Fisherman's Wharf, which was also an area we'd both visited in the past. We braved the crowds at one of the food stands and got some amazing clam chowder in a bread bowl. Next up on the agenda was a visit to the Ghiradelli chocolate store. A few years ago when I was working at Lehman Racing my boss gave me a ton of gift certificates to the Ghiradelli store because he knew what a choc-a-holic I am. I still had 
one $10 gift certificate left, so we used it on some deliciously yummy mint chocolate chip milkshakes. Although I was referring to the place as "GhiraHELLi" because of the massive amount of people there (seriously, it was uncomfortable...we could barely take one step without bumping into someone. I'm not being a people-hater, but that place had to be breaking some major fire codes today), the milkshakes made the whole experience worthwhile!At this point we decided to walk back to the Powell Street area where we started so that we could take the BART back home, and we unexpectedly came across Lombard Street, which is the famous "crookedest street in the world". Neither Karl nor myself had ever seen this, so it was pretty neat.
Let me tell you, if you ever want to work out your glutes and hamstrings, just take a walk around San Francisco! Yowzers!! We mapped our route when we got home and figured out that we had walked 5 miles through the city, and a great deal of that was uphill. These hills aren't measly little rolling hills, they are straight up and down! So I can't feel bad about not going to the gym today since we walked up and down all of those hills.
That's all for today! I just wanted to write a little blurb about our San Francisco day because it was a lot of fun! :)
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