The Frugal Fashionista Travels – San Francisco

Mom and I arrived in San Francisco, Wednesday afternoon/evening. After checking into our hotel, we decided to get a bite to eat and do some sightseeing.

Oops… I did it again!

That’s right, we went back to In-N-Out burger. #noregrets. It was literally around the corner from our hotel so we had to. 🙂

San Francisco Bus Tour

It’s become a tradition for us to take a hop on-hop off bus tour whenever we travel so of course we had to do it in San Francisco. The tour company that we went with, Big Bus Tours, offered a night tour as part of their two day package. It sounded like a great way to see the city at night so we purchased our tickets and hopped on board. The Night tour starts at Fisherman’s Wharf (which is the area that we were staying in) and it takes you through Union Street before heading over the Bay Bridge to Treasure Island. At Treasure Island the bus stops briefly so that you can get out and take pictures of the city skyline before heading back to the city.

The tour was great but by the end I was tired and I had a headache. Which is common for me these days. Usually when I have a busy day, I can get a headache which typically goes away after a good nights sleep. This headache was more of a migraine and it would not go away. It took about 16 hours (so lunchtime the next day) and some over the counter pain medication before it finally went away. I had a busy Thursday planned so I did what I could to get rid of it but sometimes I just have to work through it and wait it out. We had the day portion of the tour planned and I had plans to meet up with one of my Irish Dancer friends who I’ve known for years and who recently moved out to San Francisco to work. I was really looking forward to seeing her so I was glad that the headache finally went away so that I was able to enjoy the tour and our night out.

Since it was daytime for this tour, we sat on the top of the Double Decker bus to make it easier to take photos.  I took a lot of scenic shots from the bus, but there were so many, I put together a slideshow of some of the shots.

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We stayed on the bus after we got on in Fisherman’s Wharf until we got to Vista Point where we had an amazing view of the Golden Gate Bridge!

My mom took this beautiful shot – who needs a head in their pictures??

My beautiful mom!! (She’s going to kill me for posting her photo!!)

When we left Vista Point, we headed back to Fisherman’s Wharf. We wanted to walk along the Pier and see what they had. You’re able to see Alcatraz from the Pier and there are also people performing in among the different restaurants and shops that they have. There was one guy juggling while riding a unicycle!! So impressive!!

Since we were by the Pier, I really wanted to find the Sea Lions which I had heard were at Pier 39. The sea lions first showed up shortly after the Earthquake in 1989 taking over the K-dock and have been there ever since. They are so beautiful!! This and the Golden Gate Bridge were my favourite parts of the tour!

I kept trying in Petaluma to get a picture of a bird taking flight to capture the blur but they would not cooperate with me. As we were waiting for the tour bus to pick us up at the pier, I started taking tons of photos of the birds flying around us. I eventually got this shot of this bird flying right towards me. I totally jumped!! I thought he was going to fly right into my camera but he quickly changed directions.

We left the Wharf and headed towards Union Square. We had seen the Target there and that there were some other shops so we thought we should check them out. I wanted to see if the blue jacket was there – no such luck! 🙁 Since Target was in between stops, and the tour was ending soon, I thought that it made more sense to walk to a stop further down the line that was near where we were. It was a bit of a walk but it would have been fine except that when we got to the stop we saw that the road was closed! They were cleaning up from the Super Bowl a few days before so the street was closed and the bus wasn’t able to make that stop. The bus DID tell us that a few stops were inaccessible but I had forgotten which ones were closed. Since the street was closed that also meant that no taxis were able to get there. We ended up having to walk further to along the pier before we finally got a cab. We were SO tired by this point! It was also almost time to meet my friend Rachel so by the time we got into our hotel we quickly freshened up and headed out to meet her.

Rachel took us to an Italian restaurant that she frequented. The food was SO good!! I ordered the margherita pizza and she ordered a pasta with mushrooms. I do not like mushrooms but you know someone is a good friend when she can convince you to try it – it wasn’t bad! I was pleasantly surprised!

Even thought it was a short two days in San Francisco, we managed to fit a lot in! We had a great time and I would definitely head back to California again soon – and not just for In-N-Out 😉

Charlene xoxo