Northern California Day 8 and All the Pictures

All the Yosemite Pictures:
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday

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6:45pm 7/18/15 - on plane back to Burbank after a bit of a crazy couple hours. After returning to civilization about 2 hours outside Yosemite I got a text that my flight was delayed from 8:15 to 10:30 pm. Yikes. Then checked social media and realized there's terrible weather in LA WTF? After hitting some traffic I got lucky at Oakland airport and there was literally not a soul in security. So I was able to make it standby onto the 6:45 flight. Hooray! Except in all the rush I seem to have lost my fitbit :(

Northern California Day 7 - Yosemite

9:45pm - sitting in the lounge with a million teenagers loudly playing some stupid game after a long but fairly peaceful day. Took the morning slowly, which resulted in having to wait a little for breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Then we technically left the park and set out for the nelder sequoia grove, since the main grove in Yosemite near us is closed for restoration. The grove was quiet and peaceful with a few really amazing giant trees. One was 71 feet in circumference! Really amazing! Sadly on the roads there, there were huge burned areas and it still even smelled. Apparently fires are important for forest regeneration, but it's still sad.

Northern California Day 6 - Yosemite

(The WiFi here is weak and my pictures aren't really uploading. I'll post all as soon as I can!)

8:00pm - sitting outside the common/WiFi room looking at this: 

Northern California Day 5 - Yosemite

9:00pm - in the one common room at the hotel with WiFi. No cell service anywhere in the park and WiFi in this one room. And the signal is weak so uploading pictures will be tough. This is legit off the grid!!!!

Had breakfast in SF at the bnb and caught lyft out to Oakland. I had some credit but even without it, it would have been $30 less than the taxi from the airport. Met up with Erica and we set out for Yosemite around 9:45. We had no trouble and hit no traffic but the road called the 120 has a stretch of a few miles that nearly gave us both panic attacks. But we made it!

San Francisco day 4

Pictures here. Not as many.

4:30pm- back at the bnb for a break before dinner. At breakfast this morning, had conversations with a few people who apparently came to San Francisco with no idea what to do or see or how to do any of it. Why bother to take a vacation and do zero research???!!

Anyway after breakfast I meandered to the ferry building, which is historic and has been all redone up and is now a gourmet foodie paradise. Think hipster faneuil hall. I got a cappuccino at famed blue bottle coffee. It was tasty but nothing to go crazy out of the way for. Wandered around sampling chocolate and olive oil and cheese. Bought a couple amazing single varietal chocolate bars from Dandelion chocolate. Wandered around the farmers market that was going on. Not many vendors, which was a bit disappointing. Saturday is probably much bigger? But the exciting thing was that there was a stand with apples!! I haven't had fruit in days and apples are not fragile and don't need a fridge! Yessssss!! Also bought a couple rolls at acme bread. Not sure why and not sure when I'll eat them but it's supposed to be some of the best bread in the city so I felt I had to try it. Maybe I'll just take a few bites to say I did.

Northern California Day 3 - redwoods and vineyards

Pictures here

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8:00pm - back at the bnb after a long day. Tour bus picked me up at 7:45am. I took the tour with Extranomical. The guide was good and mostly funny but it felt rehearsed and to support good job of selling stuff. He recommended a restaurant in Sonoma I'm sure gave a kick back, etc. Anyway, it was a good day and worth the money. The lovely people at my bnb bagged up my croissants for me. Took a joyride of sorts through San Francisco picking up the other people on the tour before crossing the golden gate bridge and onto Muir Woods, home of redwoods.

What a magical place. No cell service, no sounds except nature, these gargantuan trees that make people look like ants. Awesome. Wandered around for about an hour before the tire continued on the pch for a bit and into Sonoma.

San Francisco - day 2

Pictures here
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3:15pm - back at the bnb for a breather after another long day. Had lovely breakfast of muffin and croissants in the hotel then went to Mr. Holmes bakery for more unhealthy things. People were waiting for "cruffins" that make their place famous. I was too late and not patient enough to deal with that, so I went in and got a ferrero rocher choux bomb instead. It was a cream puff with some kind of delicious hazelnut cream inside. Survived a walk through the tenderloin district and picked up the 5 bus at city hall. Took that to Alamo Square to see the painted ladies houses. Meandered through the cool Victorian era houses and weird hippy vibes of haight Ashbury, which I think smelled stronger than most of Amsterdam. It seems fitting in a way that at that intersection there's now a Ben and Jerry's ice cream shop.

Tap, tap, is this thing on? (Northern California day 1 - San Francisco)

Photos here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/debstah1/sets/72157653439110053

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To say I'm the worst blogger ever would be a massive understatement. But here I am sitting at the very cool open pizza counter at the lovely Cotogna restaurant with a glass of obscure Sicilian wine and focaccia taking a break for an early dinner after a full day in San Francisco.

I will say, as much as I love Europe, it's really convenient to hop on a plane and arrive in your destination in an hour. The irony of that is the taxi from the airport in Oakland to my bnb in downtown San Francisco cost more than the one way flight. Ah well. But I woke up in L.A. And had lunch in Chinatown. So I can't complain.