san francisco

back in may, i somehow had the incredible luck to win a trip for two to san francisco. randy and i decided to take the trip in october, when the weather was supposed to be nice and it would be a little less touristy. our moms were nice enough to come watch our kids and we got away for an amazing week together. i can honestly say i looked forward to it every day for five months. we decided to call it our ten year anniversary trip (a few months early) and made the most of it.

here are tons of pictures from our trip. i don't think we have this many pictures of the two of us from the last ten years combined. seriously.

this is us on the flight there (they booked the tickets close to our departure, so we weren't sitting next to each other).

i took this picture of randy riding a train to send to jonathan, who was obsessed with trains.

most of our planning prior to the trip revolved around food. we actually downloaded a special app to keep track of all of the restaurants that we potentially wanted to go to. we started out by heading straight to pizzeria delfina, close by the airport. it's always good to start out a trip with a delicious meal.

after pizzeria delifina we headed to redwood city to see our friends, the garfields, and then went to trader joe's to get some snacks and food to keep at our airbnb. after getting settled at our airbnb, we went and found some sushi before settling in for the night.

the next day of our trip was sunday and we started out by going to church (and ran into an old friend of mine), then headed up highway 1 to see some of the coast. we stopped at a lookout and had a picnic lunch in the car and then pressed on to stinson beach.

it was so windy on the coast, i feel like i was constantly fighting my hair in pictures.

the next day we walked down to tartine bakery for breakfast. i loved all the bougainvillea we saw during our trip and made randy take a picture of me in front of some.  

they had the most amazing croissants i've ever had.

after breakfast, we got into our rental car and drove south to palo alto to check out stanford. i fell in love with palo alto and stanford when i did an internship in the bay area after my first year of law school and wanted to show randy around. i think he has always kind of rolled his eyes when i spoke effusively of my love for palo alto, but after spending the day there with me, he understood.

we went and checked out the stanford practice rooms (pretty inferior to BYU's actually).

and just generally walked around campus and took in the pretty architecture.

after touring campus, we headed to a movie theater in mountain view to see the martian. we don't really get to go see movies together very often and it felt luxurious to go see one in the middle of the day. it was made even better because the theater we went to happened to have amazing leather recliners as seats. one of my big complaints about going to see movies at theaters is that i hate paying to watch something that i could watch later from the comfort of my couch. this was just as comfortable, if not more so, than my couch. we liked it so much that we went back and saw another movie at the same theater on thursday.

after the movie we walked around one of the google satellite campuses for a little while.

we came back to san francisco and checked into our second airbnb, which was in noe valley and a vast improvement over our first one. we loved it and ended up spending a lot of time there over the next few days. i didn't get any pictures of it, of course.

we wanted to go to a restaurant called nopa in san francisco, but could only get reservations for monday at 10:00pm. since we didn't have kids and could take a nap the next day, we decided to go for it. it did not disappoint.

this was warm goat cheese with persimmons and pears. delicious.

randy had some mackerel that was to die for and the pork chop was the best i have had. seriously good food. 

part of our prize was a tour around the city with jordan ferney, the main blogger for oh happy day. she has a little red fiat and we crammed into the back of it for a really fun tour of the city. we started at the ferry building and had lunch at an oyster place and then proceded around to the various shops, getting samples of food along the way. jordan was such a fun tour guide and made the whole experience really special for us. she also brought along her friend, valerie, from paris, who was delightful as well. these pictures are not all in order:

this is us in the back of the fiat.

outside of the fortune cookie factory in chinatown.

jordan and me.

this is valerie, randy, and me in the fiat. we were quite the sight riding around in the city and got all sorts of funny looks.

one of the stops was at the park by the "painted ladies." you may know them better as the full house houses.

the palace of fine arts (fighting the wind again):

top of divisidero street in pacific heights:

pictures from a photobooth at the musee mechanique at fisherman's wharf. it is essentially an arcade, but with tons of great older machines. randy was especially enamored with all of the mechanical musical instruments.

i, of course, parked it at ms. pacman.

crissy field:

lombard street. we later saw some pictures of us riding down this street in the fiat posted on instagram by random people. like i said, we were quite the spectacle.

another part of our prize was a bike tour of the city with dan, one of the founders of public bikes. so, wednesday morning we set out on bikes see some different parts of the city we hadn't explored yet. dan took us down through golden gate park. we took it nice and easy (thankfully!) so we could take in all the sights. the weather couldn't have been better.

we rode through the park and stopped at the de young museum, where we went up into the de young tower and took in the gorgeous panoramic views of the city. i would spend a lot of time up there if i lived in san francisco.

after that, we continued through golden gate park until we hit the coast.

we grabbed some breakfast in the outer sunset district and then headed back through the park and ended up back in nopa. after the tour, we walked down to japantown for some lunch at a noodlehouse (not that impressive, i can't remember the name) and then walked around a little more before we were exhausted and caught an uber back to our airbnb.

on thursday, we headed down highway 1 to see some more of the coast. we stopped at pillar point and then half moon bay before winding our way back inland on the very winding 84.

we wanted some authentic tacos and ended up making our way to a place in east palo alto that ended up having decent tacos, but was pretty sketchy.

after lunch we went back to stanford an found a nice little place to sit and read for a while. i am so grateful that randy likes to vacation like i do. we took the whole week at our own pace and didn't overdo it. it was so relaxing.

after hanging out and reading for a little while, we went to another movie at the same theater we went to on monday and then got dinner at in-n-out. like i said, our vacation, our way. 

i woke up feeling a little under the weather on friday (i was thankful i felt well until the day we were leaving), so we walked around the mission district a little bit and then rode an uber into the financial district to try and get sandwiches at a place that was recommended to us, but wasn't open yet. at least randy found the steinway store while we were walking around.

after grabbing lunch to go at boudin instead, we headed back to our airbnb and i napped until it was time to head to the airport. 

this was such an amazing experience for us. we were both so relaxed the whole week and i loved the time with just randy and no other distractions. we are now committed to making this happen more often than every ten years in our marriage. if only it was always on someone else's dime...