At the end of May, Ollie and I flew up to visit family in San Fransisco. I didn’t plan on blogging about it, but it ended up being such a fun memorable trip I wanted to share the highlights and offer an alternative reference for how to spend 36 hours in SF.
We got off the plane and headed straight towards Palo Alto. Ollie was really interested in seeing some of the famous Silicon Valley, so we stopped by the Facebook campus. There are a bunch more stops you can make if you want, but it’s a lot of just looking at buildings from the outside. We decided just going to Facebook was enough.
Next up was Stanford since it’s so close to Facebook, and Ollie is obsessed with visiting college campuses. It was a gorgeous day to stroll around coffee-in-hand and check out the apparel in the bookstore.
After a morning outside the city we headed back towards SF and straight to Southern Pacific Brewery for a pint and some nibbles. Next was our main event of the day– enjoying park drinks in Dolores Park. This was a highlight of the weekend!
We headed back to my fam’s house to get ready for the evening ahead. We had dinner at an authentic German restaurant then stopped by The Wave Organ, which is a really cool sculpture that makes noise (music?) when waves hit. We snapped photos of the Marina and The Golden Gate Bridge before heading out to some bars in the Marina District.
After a big night out we lazily headed to Fisherman’s Wharf the next morning (where you can see Alcatraz in the distance). We wandered up to North Beach which is such a cool part of the city! I fell in love with the views. It also led us to the other highlight of the weekend–eating pizza at Tony’s. I cannot recommend this place enough. They use a coal oven, which is big on the east coast but there’s apparently only 3 coal ovens in California. Our waiter also was telling us about how many awards the owner has won. Here’s an excerpt from their website: “Tony has won numerous awards including Best Pizza Margherita at the World Pizza Cup in Naples, Italy and Best Pizza Romana at the World Championship of Pizza Makers in 2011. Tony was the first American and non Neapolitan to win this coveted award in Naples.” Wow… you can taste the skill that’s for sure.
Another place you shouldn’t miss in North Beach is Vesuvio Cafe, a historic bar of the Beat Generation. Definitely go in for at least one drink and learn about all the famous writers that frequented. (I wish I had seen Kill Your Darlings before visiting–would have appreciated it that much more.) We stopped into an Irish bar for one last drink before sadly heading to the airport. San Francisco continues to impress, and I can’t wait to get back! might already have the next visit booked 🙂
The last time I went to San Francisco I wrote this post if you’d like to continue with your SF wanderlusting!
That was such a fun weekend! Love the post and reminiscing! Cannot wait for our next 36 hour adventure!!