We had a little family trip of sorts in the middle of September. Ryan had an expo he wanted to go to in San Francisco and since I had never been I wanted to go too. We thought he had to be there for a few hours Tues, Wed, and Thursday so I booked all of our hotels and then he found out it would just be Thursday he needed to be there-all the better! We left Sunday afternoon and drove to Sparks, NV (just outside of Reno) and stayed there. I had never driven through that part of Utah so it was kind of cool to see a different drive. It was actually really pretty-until NV and then it was just all the same and then really dark and LONG!! We had a little excitement as we ran over a fox-we think since all we could see were a few tufts of fur when we stopped for gas- and Alli told us not to run over any more :). So Monday morning we just hung out at the cool pool at our hotel for a while and then headed out to Tahoe to meet up with some good friends-Jay and Beth- who happened to be there on vacation. They have been in Indianapolis all summer so it has been a while since we have seen them. Tahoe was really pretty-another place Ryan and I had never been to- and Alli and I had fun digging on the beach and burying Ilene's legs in the sand. Ilene had fun "eating" the sand haha-the beach is obviously not the best place for a baby, but she liked crawling and walking on the sand! Then we headed to Sacramento-to meet up with more friends we haven't seen in a long time-Mike & Megan. But apparently we did not get any pictures with them :(.
Tuesday in San Francisco we went down to Pier 39 and walked around and did the sightseeing stuff in the area-Aquarium, Bay Cruise, Lombard Street-most crooked street, Cable Car ride to China town followed by a walk back to our car because the cable car broke down-awesome! It really was fun though walking through so many different neighborhoods. Sidenote-At the Aquarium Ilene was apparently helping me hold the camera while we were touching the starfish and other creatures in one of the touch pools and the camera got dropped-in the water :(. I thought I had the camera strap around my wrist and obviously didn't-not so awesome. So for the Bay Cruise we just used our waterproof camera so the pictures aren't great of the Golden Gate Bridge, but o/well. The Bay Cruise was pretty cool, it was fun going around Alcatraz and getting a decent view of everything on that island. The Aquarium was also pretty decent-until I broke the camera. Lombard Street was crazy because it really is super zigzagged. I had never realized how steep the neighborhoods in San Francisco are. Ryan and I loved China town. It was just so crazy seeing all of these people and their whole life is basically in these 8 blocks. It was so fun seeing someplace new! I love the culture! So many different things to see. We also made a few stops at Ghiradelli Square while we were there- those pumpkin chocolates and chocolate sundaes-so delicious! Probably a good idea I do not live closer to a Ghiradelli restaurant :). And public transport=cool, unique people to talk too, but unfortunately it also = interesting SMELLS of body odor and insane wait times :(. While it was fun to try, I was glad to use our car the rest of the time. We had done a little "research" to find a good restaurant so we drove around and found it only to find out it was in fact a "bar" so the fabulous food reviews we had read were "slightly misguided" :) so we went for a little walk and found a very authentic, yummy restaurant in Little Italy so it all worked out very deliciously.
Our hotel was right on the bayfront so we went for a little jog along the water Wednesday morning.
Ryan did was he does best-found a little crab for Alli.
This was the release back "into the wild".
We loved our hotel hot tub-swimming pool not so much, but Alli got to be a better swimmer on this trip. She has now mastered the "back float"- pretty big time :).
We went to an A's game while we were there-it was preceded by a quick stop to BestBuy to improve our camera situation after the rice trick failed us :(. I guess it works better with cell phones than cameras... Luckily Ryan informed me he had been wanting to get a new camera since ours was a little on the old side.
Ilene LOVED the elephant puppet we bought.
Us with "Stomper" the elephant.
After some lunch we went to the Exploratorium (included in our citypass). It was cool, lots of science exhibits, lots that were too advanced for Alli, but plenty she loved-including one about cells and how they are formed oddly enough! She also liked the crooked floor exhibit, the magnetic ones, the pendulum art, and all of the music ones. Funny thing was the exhibits were run by younger teenagers so when they were closing the place they are rode/walked around on singing this closing song-it reminded us of Willy Wonka, kinda strange.
This was one of my favorites-seriously kind of trippy drinking from a toilet drinking fountain-even if it is clean and has never been used as a toilet!
I LOVED the architecture outside, if I lived there I think I would have wanted my wedding reception in these gorgeous archways surrounded by lakes.
Then we went back to Chinatown-for some delicious Chinese food and another attempt at finding us all Chinese outfits. Since we were there later, there were more local people hanging out around the shops, including these awesome musicians-unfortunately our camera battery died :(. And then we had to finish the night with another stop at Ghiradelli-I am addicted to the Pumpkin Spice Chocolates!
Thursday while Ryan was at the expo, we went to California Academy of Sciences-super cool place! They have a cool penguin exhibit and we saw the feeding and Q & A.
Then they have areas with mounted animals-giraffes and a bunch of other mammals.
In the basement it is a giant aquarium with tons of tanks. This was one of the bigger ones, but there is a whole Philippine tank, Amazon basin exhibit, and another touch pool.
This time I was successful in keeping our camera out of the water :).
They also had a 4 story Rainforest/Jungle exhibit and at the top there were tons of butterflies. One landed on a lady's shirt and Alli was really hoping one would land on her and right as we were about to leave it landed in her hair, she was thrilled :).
Then they had this amazing children's play area! There was a treehouse section, farmer's market section, model ship, legos, puzzles, figurines, etc. So many cool things! Both girls were loving it so much!
Ilene thought this balcony area was about the greatest thing ever!
I loved all the colorful houses! I would hate living there with the traffic and hills and lack of stores in convenient places, but it is a really cool place to visit!
After leaving San Francisco we drove to Vacaville for the Jelly Belly factory.
They have a really fun tour where you get to see the history of the company and my favorite part-try the jelly bellies in all of their different stages as you go through the manufacturing plant. And the best part is the little bag of jelly beans they give you at the end :). That didn't stop us from buying 5 bags of belly flop jelly beans to take with us though. They also have all of their flavors for you to try-including the nasty ones. We tried some of their yummy ones and then we tried diaper wipe-tastes just like you would guess and Ryan tried pencil shavings, but that was as daring as we got-no vomit or booger for us thank you very much.
After that we drove to Bakersfield, but got there late and left really early to drive to Vegas for the Olympia expo. We went with Ryan for part of the time, it was fun to meet some of the people he works with. While I was feeding Ilene and Alli was sitting by me I apparently picked a "perfect" spot that I thought would be out of the way enough-well it turns out we had a great view of the figure models when they were greeting fans after their competition-think super skimpy bikinis with nasty muscular fake baked and spray tanned bodies in 6 in. heels -Alli informed me they weren't modest :) and we also had a "fabulous" view of the Sumo wrestling competition-who wants to see a 300+ lb. man basically wearing a diaper exposing the majority of his butt cheeks?? Not me or Alli that is for sure, she informed it that was gross. We appreciated the men wearing bike shorts under the diaper :). So we didn't stay in our spot for too long... We found a fun mall with a fantastic play area after dinner and then Saturday Ryan went back for a short time and then we went swimming and hung out at our hotel until we headed home. It was a great vacation, lots of driving :(. Alli did great, but she was so ready to be done driving by the time we were done and Ilene was just super annoyed and sad to be in her carseat for soo soo long!
