March 18-19, 2011

Chris and I go to San Francisco every year for a weekend to celebrate our Anniversary. This year we celebrated our 10 year anniversary! Friday night we arrived in San Francisco and checked in to the hotel, This year we stayed in the art district, we won't stay here again. The hotel itself wasn't bad, it was an old hotel where the elevator door had one of those cage doors you shut before the elevator door closes. I really liked the hotel, it just wasn't a good area. One of the things we do every year is go to the Powell Street Mall and eat at Buckhorn Grill. We asked how far away it was from the hotel to see if we needed to drive. We were told just a couple blocks, so we walked. Well it was more like a mile away. After we ate we walked around the mall and then we hopped on the trolley to Ghiradelli Square. We walked down to Pier 39 and back to Ghiradelli Square, took the trolley back to Powell Street, and then walked back to the hotel. Saturday we were expecting rain so we took our umbrella and walked back to the Powell Street Trolley to head back to Fisherman's Wharf. We didn't have any set plans about what we wanted to do so we just started walking. It was raining so we wanted to find something to do inside. We decided to go into Ripley's Believe It or Not and the Mirror Maze. We had fun doing the different exhibits and reading about weird things. The mirror maze was pretty fun too! We decided to go back to the hotel and change into dry clothes. Then we went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner. I have been to a Cheesecake Factory several times, but Chris had never been before. This Cheesecake Factory is at the top of Macy's with a great view of Union Square. While we were eating it had really started to pour. And the wind was unbelievable. We stayed in the restaurant as long as we could, but it was obvious the rain was only coming down harder the wind was blowing harder. So we decided to leave and make a run for the hotel. About halfway back our umbrella breaks because of the wind.  We decide to throw it away and continue running. I wanted to take a direct route back to the hotel because of the rain but Chris said we couldn't go the direction I wanted to go because it was the Tenderloin district and it was a really bad area. So we had to go around it. We saw a dead body laying in the street, hit and run. We kept running. By the time we made it to the hotel, we were drenched from head to toe! We cranked up the heat that night. Fun weekend adventure in SF.