Our Visit to San Francisco….Part 2

I meant to post this right after I wrote about our day at Alcatraz, but got a little sidetracked with life in general. So I’m taking a few minutes before dinner to jot this down.

After we arrived back at the pier, we met up with our Florida friends for an open- top tour bus ride of the city. This was really neat. We were able to see sights that we normally wouldn’t have gone looking for.

This is the church where Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio were married.

                                                      

We drove through Little Italy and Chinatown. Here is an interesting piece of architecture on one of the buildings in Little Italy.

                                           

This  is the Transamerica Pyramid Building. It is 48 stories high and a  rather impressive structure.

                                                    

We drove by Union Square, so I had to snap a photo of Saks and Tiffany’s. Two places I have never shopped at.

                                            

This is San Francisco’s city hall. The front and back views of it. That really is gold on the dome and spire of the building.

            

These are the “painted ladies”; seven beautiful Victorian houses that sit on a slight hill.

                                        

This is just another interesting building we passed. I loved looking at the houses. The colors on some are so flamboyant, and the details so intricate.

                                         

We went by the San Francisco symphony and opera house, drove through Golden Gate Park, where the California Academy of Sciences, the Japanese Tea Garden and the de Young Art Museum are located. When Blake was a baby, we visited the Academy of Sciences. It is a wonderful place to take kids.

We also drove  by the Presidio, the Exploratorium and the Museum of Asian Art.

I think the highlight of the tour was the Golden Gate Bridge. All day my niece, Delaney, had been saying she wanted to go across it and then when we saw it, she wanted to know if that was the one from Full House.

                                         

By this time, it had gotten a little breezy and chilly on the top of that bus. Our noses and toes were pretty much frozen.  The tour took about 2 hours, and was a great way to take in a lot of the sights, without having to find them ourselves.

You can see how bundled up the kids were.  No, Laina is not getting sick.  She was trying to duck and avoid a picture!

                                          

When we left the bus, we headed straight to Pier 39 for dinner at Bubba Gump’s. Now, if you’ve never heard of or been to a Bubba Gump’s, it’s a restaurant based on the Forrest Gump movie and his Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Great restaurant to take kids to. It’s noisy, has good food and is not a budget buster if you’re wanting seafood. The one strange thing my husband pointed out was that they did not serve Dr. Pepper, which was Forrest’s favorite drink. Oh, well.

Life is like a box of chocolates……