Our first night together (the wedding night) was spent at the Stoneleigh Hotel in Dallas. It's a really old hotel built around 1923, this hotel had a lot of character. We reserved the "honeymoon suite" which actually turned out to be a two room suite.
After all the wedding festivities, we had a limo take us to the Stoneleigh. We'd changed out of our wedding clothes into "going away outfits". There was so much going on at the wedding and so many people to talk to that we really didn't eat much. I think I had the piece of cake that J fed me and maybe a little something from the buffet. We were both exhausted and hungry by the time we got to the hotel. It was then I realized that my purse with all my credit cards and money had been left in my mom's car. So, on my wedding night, I had to call my mom and ask her to bring my purse. Then we realized we didn't have a ride to the airport the next day so my mom volunteered to pick us up in the morning and bring my purse then.
We changed and walked over to a Mexican restaurant that is no longer in business. Before we even got food, we each got a margarita. I was buzzed well before the food got there. When the food came, we each got another margarita. When we got back to the hotel, I just wanted to shut my eyes for a minute. The next thing I knew, J was shaking me awake to tell me the hotel had sent us champagne and chocolate strawberries.
The lovely Champagne & chocolate strawberries. And J giving me a rose. How sweet...
The next day we flew out to San Francisco. What a great city. We stayed at the Mark Hopkins and we were there for 7 days. I brought all long sleeve shirts and pants. I still ended up buying a jacket (and a nice one too) because it was so cold there. It was only September so I thought the long sleeves would be fine. Who knew?
Here we are - Mr & Mrs - ready to hit the town. Unfortunately, I got sick. I was living on Dayquil the whole week. First we went to the San Francisco Museum of Art. We got there a little early and hung out in this park across the street. It was a pretty cool museum. We ended up buying some prints from there to hang in our house.
Check out the sculpture on top of the museum entrance. It's a lady lying on her side. Very cool.
Here we are hanging out in the park across the street waiting for the museum to open.
Not only did we walk around the museum and then walk around the area but we also walked back to the hotel. Up hill! And me with only one functioning lung. Here's J waiting for me to catch up. It seemed like we were always walking up hill. It was great exercise and you'd think we'd have lost weight but I guess we ate enough to make up the difference.It was back to the hotel for a little rest. We had a great room. It was on the corner of the building so there were two windows. Here's one of the views of the city that we had from our room.
The Mark Hopkins also sent us some champagne and gave us a congratulations card. I thought that was really cool.
After a little rest, we went back out to Fisherman's Wharf. I think that's the main tourist attraction. It was full of little shops and restaurants. This was where I got my fabulous jacket.
There's the sign on the wharf. That's me under the sign but it's hard to tell. We spent some time down there walking around checking things out. There was also a submarine down there called the USS Pampanito that was used in WWII. They let you go on and walk around on the different decks. It was very interesting.Then we walked over to Ghirardelli Square. Very nice. It's all about the chocolate.
This photo doesn't really do it justice. It looks really cool when it's all lit up. We went through all the shops picking up souvenirs, etc. Since we were so close, we decided to walk down Lombard street. It's the crookedest street in the world. Unfortunately, we walked it at night so the photos didn't come out too well. I hope people don't drive that street at night because it's not very well lit and the curves are tight.When we got back to the hotel, we were exhausted. What a great day, though. I love this town.
The next day we took a boat tour of San Francisco Bay. It's gorgeous.
There's Alcatraz Island. It started out as a fort. In 1850 it was a defense strategy for San Francisco Bay. In 1907, it was decommissioned as a fort. In the 1930's, it became a maximum security prison, housing many notorious criminals such as Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly and the Birdman of Alcatraz. We took the tour. It was by far one of the most interesting tours I've ever taken.
They let you go into one the actual cells. It was very tiny. They also let you go into one of the solitary confinement cells. That was beyond creepy.
The next day we rented a car and drove around. We went over the Golden Gate Bridge into Sausolito and then we drove up in the hills on the other side of the bay. It was gorgeous!
This is one of my favorite pictures. We were up in the hills on across the bay from San Francisco. I thought this was an amazing view of the Golden Gate Bridge.
This was in the same spot but looking out to the Pacific ocean. It was very foggy up there so you can't really see the horizon. Being up there, just the two of us was very calming. It was like we had the whole place to ourselves.
As we were working our way back down, there were several places for us to pull over and look out. This was one of them. It was on the side of the hill that was away from the water. It was just as beautiful.
Here's another shot of the Golden Gate Bridge. It's one of those monuments that you can't stop taking pictures of. It got colder as we got closer to the water.Our last day we took a wine tour. You can't come to this area without touring a few wineries. We aren't big wine drinkers but it was a nice day. We visited three wineries and stopped for lunch. The first winery was Viansa. They only sold their wine at the winery. It was pretty good - kind of sweet.
Here's J with the grapes. They actually had vines right up by the door in kind of a little garden. The next place we stopped at was Ravenswood. We really didn't like this one. Me especially.
Here I am tasting the wine. (Editors note: this is a sign of things to come!)The last place we stopped was at Domaine Chandon. This winery made sparkling wine (Champagne) but they can't call it champagne because it's not made in Champagne, France - or some such thing. We actually got to tour through the winery and see the process of how they made the wine. Afterwards, we got a nice little cheese and wine snack in a beautiful little grotto.
Both the wine and cheese were really good. After that it was back on the bus. It was a nice little tour of Sonoma. We were tired when we got back.We met up with my cousins, Randy & Margo Newman. I hadn't seen them in years and it was really great that they were both in San Francisco. We had dinner with them at this excellent restaurant called Tatisch Grill. Unfortunately, I didn't take my camera.
The last night in town we had dinner and drinks at the top of the Mark. It was a restaurant at the top of the Mark Hopkins hotel. It had a 360 view of the city, very similar to Reunion Tower. The view was great.
And so ended our trip to San Francisco. We had a wonderful time and we hope to go back some day.
No comments:
Post a Comment