San Francisco, California.

Our next major stop on our west coast road trip was San Francisco. We left Oregon in the morning and it was cold and foggy. As we drove it started to get sunny but it didn't warm up. I was a little disappointed. I think this was also the day I took a turn driving the Camaro.

I was pumped to see the state of California welcome sign. I think I even looked up Phantom Planet on Youtube at this point. 

The further south we drove, the more the sun came out. The sun (and radio) was slightly short-lived and we soon found ourselves in the Redwood National park. The trees were huge. I honestly thought people were just exaggerating how large the trees actually are. They're not exaggerating. They're enormous. It makes you feel so small.

The closer we got to San Francisco, the more the fog started rolling in. We had been driving for about 10 hours and decided once we got to our hotel that we'd just order room service and watch movies in bed. As someone who usually declines something like that and always finds a reason that we should save money -- I fully encouraged the idea of eating a full meal in a king-sized bed. It was perfect. 

In the morning, we finally had a day of exploring rather than driving. We got a slow start, which turned out to be not such a smart idea, and then took the BART to Pier 39. Oh wait, we tried to do that, and got confused, got off the BART, tried to walk, our google map was all turned around, we tried to get on a public bus but were sent away because we didn't have exact cash (uh we didn't have $2... it's true). This confusion led to us WALKING for what seemed like 4 miles uphill (Sean assures me it was 1.3 miles rarely uphill) and eventually we got to the piers.

We decided to buy a San Francisco GO card. Since it was close to noon by the time we got ourselves down there, we had to cram as many tourist-y things in that we could, in just 5 hours. The GO card while super cool and cost effective has a time limit of 5:30PM. We decided to do the Hop On/Hop Off tour (but never hopped off), the Golden Gate Bridge Cruise, and the aquarium.

After the bus tour, but before the cruise I realized that my clothing just wasn't cutting it. I was freezing. I had to cave and buy another layer. I'm now a proud owner of a California sweatshirt.

After the cruise, we had dinner -- Sean got dungeness crab and the waiter tied a bib on him. It was a bit messy for me. The day was great. I wished we had time to ride the trolley but the wait was like two hours long. Instead, we rode the Historic trolley back to the BART (the driver let us on for free!) and we went back to our hotel in Berkeley. :)