San Francisco, California

A few years ago, I had the privilege of taking a work trip to Sacramento, California to meet with a client. It was all business for 90% of the trip, until it was our last night in town. Unfortunately, the client we were working with needed to go home early, so my co-worker and I decided to wrap up the day a little early and head into San Francisco … after all, we were SO close, I couldn’t NOT go! I had never been to San Francisco before and was really eager to check it all out – even if we only had a few hours.

After a few Google searches, we determined it would take us about 2 hours to get to San Francisco from Sacramento. We planned to leave the office about 2pm, so we figured that would give us enough daylight time to see a few things before grabbing an early dinner and then head back to Sacramento. By the time 2pm hit, we literally ran back to the hotel, shed our business attire and put on some comfy clothes and hit the road.

Whenever I go on work trips, I always rent the most affordable option, but I’ve made it a habit to sweet talk my way into free upgrades at the car rental places. Usually this goes over pretty well…with the exception of the one time “free upgrade” meant mini-van. Not quite what I was hoping for with an upgrade! On this particular trip, my free upgrade was a fairly new Dodge Challenge, which was awesome!

I literally had no idea where we were going once we got into San Francisco, so I just plugged a downtown address into Google Maps. Since we were bound to hit rush hour traffic, Google Maps took us around the the north side of the bay. Once we passed through Vacaville, there was some gorgeous scenery to our right with the mountains in the distance.

In Vallejo, we turned right and drove through the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Apparently this wetland area was historically one of the largest tidal marshes on the Pacific Coast. Most of this drive was over a narrow bridge and traffic was slow.

Once we started getting closer to San Francisco, I realized that we were going to be driving over the Golden Gate Bridge and got really excited. I pulled over to the side of the road to quickly try to find a good, scenic place to look at the bridge. Google doesn’t disappoint and brought up Baker Beach. I immediately plugged that into Maps and continued on.

The pull-off to Baker Beach was legit the first turn once we got off the bridge. I almost missed it. If you don’t know (because I didn’t before this trip), Baker Beach is part of the Presidio, which used to be a military base founded by the Spanish between 1812 and 1997. Eventually the Presdio was decommissioned as an Army base and became a part of the Golden Gate National Recreational Area. There were some pretty neat looking hiking trails exploring the area, but unfortunately we didn’t have the time to go explore them all.

Parking at Baker Beach was fairly easy. I’m not sure if it was because of the time of day (about 4pm) or what, but there weren’t a ton of people there. We pulled into a good spot and quickly made our way out onto the beach. The view of the bridge was golden! (see what I did there?)

We walked up and down the beach for about 30 minutes before determining we needed to continue exploring before the sun went down. I’m very happy that we had a good experience at Baker Beach, only because I later found out that it is considered a “clothing optional” beach. Ack. That would have been awkward.

We did a few more Google searches in the car before deciding that we just HAD to go see the Painted Ladies — you know, the “Full House” houses!

While the homes in this area were gorgeous and definitely historical (and expensive), I had to say I was not really “wow-ed” by the Painted Ladies. I think it was built into my brain from watching so many Full House openers that there was a huge sprawling park with a view of the ocean. Not quite. Alamo Square Park was about as big as a postage stamp and very crowded with other tourists looking to get photos of the homes. I’m glad we checked this one off the list, but I don’t necessarily need to come back to this area.

We hopped back in the car, knowing we only had about another hour of daylight left and drove around the city for a bit. On a whim, we found a REALLY good parking spot in Union Square and decided to park and walk for a bit.

Union Square is FULL of really expensive stores, but unfortunately most of them were closed by the time we got there. I really didn’t care about window shopping – I can do that at home in Dallas – but I entertained my co-worker (who is not from a big city) and walked around a bit.

About 6pm we started to get hungry, and knowing we were so close to China Town, we opted to go find some good Chinese food. I think we underestimated the hills because our legs were on FIRE as we walked in and out of stores in Chinatown. We bought a few souvenirs and then started to head back towards the car. We were getting really hungry by this point.

After looking at the menu of a few places, we found a place online called Kin Khao which looked amazing. The wait time at Kin Khao was over 2 hours. We figured we’d try again next time. At this point, our tummies were growling like crazy, and I saw a place called New Delhi Indian across the street. My co-worker had never eaten Indian food before, so of course we had to go try it out.

I literally ordered one of everything on the menu – I just couldn’t decide! Everything was so delicious and the wait staff was really nice. I will definitely go back to New Delhi Indian if I’m ever in San Francisco!

By the time we finished dinner it was almost 9pm and we knew we needed to start heading back to Sacramento, as we had a 2 hour drive ahead of us.

On the way back, there was a terrible accident right outside of Sacramento, which made us exit in Vacaville to go north, and then take I-5 into town. This probably added an extra 1.5 hours to our trip, and we didn’t get back to the hotel until after midnight. We were exhausted!

Overall, I really enjoyed the few hours we had to play in San Francisco. I didn’t find the homeless population overwhelming like everyone says, but may be I wasn’t in the right places. I felt pretty safe, even at night.

There are plenty of things I still want to explore and see in San Francisco – Alcatraz, ride a cable car while singing the Rice-A-Roni song (its the small things, ok), and go up to Twin Peaks for a view of the city. I’d also love to take a trip down to Big Sur, Monterrey, Wine Country (Napa/Sonoma), see the Redwoods, and go to Lake Tahoe. Who knew there was SO MUCH to do in Northern California!? Hopefully I can get Donovan there soon!