When we arrived in California we stayed at the Marriot Marquis for the first two nights. The first night we had no plan, so we wandered around the city and took it all in. I described it as a mixture of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile and Madison, Wisconsin’s hipster filled State Street. We found a ridiculously big Nordstrom (I can’t remember how many levels it was, I’m pretty sure it was never ending.) Then it was time to look for food.
We ended up at 3 restaurants that night. The first was a brew pub that only served tapas, we were starving after the exhausting plane ride, so we grabbed some drinks and went on to the next place. We found an awesome Mexican restaurant for dinner. Then we enjoyed drinks and dessert at The View on top of our hotel, the Marriot Marquis. The Sunset views of San Francisco were gorgeous.
The next day I was a panelist at an event, so AJ and I parted ways for a while. I had met some other amazing bloggers (Jen and Kelly from Makobi Scribe and Lisa from Mom on the Side) at the event and we all decided to head to Chinatown after, we found AJ and headed over.
Chinatown isn’t exactly what we expected, it was mostly a lot of shops selling trinkets and souvenirs. I’m glad we got to see it though! We bought a few souvenirs for Aliceana, and I might have bought a plush Buu from Dragon Ball Z, when in Chinatown…buy anime plush? right? He’s currently sitting in my office while I write this. We also picked up a little trolley (we didn’t realize it was a magnet until we got home) a pair of chopsticks, and a cat that waves non-stop. It’s in our kitchen and Aliceana always pauses to wave and say “Hi kitty!”
AJ and I went out to dinner at a brew pub, I loved the walk. We ended up walking through a really pretty park with some dogs and kids playing in it. On the way back from the restaurant a guy in an 80’s hair metal Tee saw AJ’s beard and said “Rock on dude.” Those moments always make me laugh, it’s like he’s in a secret bearded society and gets major respect from strangers. It’s always funny when he meets a fellow bearded man and they just give this little nod of approval.
Oh, and then we went to a bakery and bought $20 worth of goodies. Some for dessert and some for breakfast, yeah foodies in San Francisco is such a dangerous combination.
The next day we headed to get Super Duper Burgers for lunch before heading to San Jose. Once we got to San Jose we got on a bus to go to Los Gatos for a visit to Netflix Headquarters. I’ll share those details in another post.
When we got back to San Jose it was time to kick off BlogHer14. BlogHer was so much fun, we met great bloggers, great brands, and even a few celebrities. The first two days I wore Doctor Who dresses (AJ wore matching Tees,) and they were such a hit. I had people coming up to me all the time asking where I bought the dresses or telling me how much they loved them. It worked really well with brands too. Who would have thought? Anyway, back to the celebrities..
AJ had an entire conversation with David Tutera, trying to convince David that baking is pretty easy and that he should give it a shot. He had no idea who David Tutera was and thought it was just a brand rep until we had to sign consent forms in case they were to share photos online.
I also met Khloe Kardashian. If you ever want to feel extremely short and chubby then you should stand next to Khloe, she was so skinny and pretty! She was really sweet in person.
The McDonald’s closing party was amazing. Rev Run was the DJ and we had Happy Meals, sangria, and beer all night long.
When we were in San Jose we managed to find enough time to head to the Winchester Mansion. This is the house that Stephen King based the book and movie Rose Red off of. It was amazing to see in person, I wasn’t exactly excited when we were standing in the most haunted part of the mansion, but we survived without any ghostly encounters. This house was so exciting to see, with around 160 rooms, most of the building didn’t make very much sense. There are closets that are only an inch deep, ballrooms that were never used, and even a door that opens to a two story drop.
Then we were off to Carmel-by-the-Sea. We had reserved a compact car for our trip, but the last compact car was taken a minute before we got there. So we got a free upgrade to a red Ford Mustang. You can’t say no to that!
Carmel is such a majestic little town. They don’t even have street lights, our hotel offered us flashlights if we were going to venture downtown at night. We ventured down town while it was still light out, here are some pictures (it’s a very dog friendly town, as you can see from the Yorkie in the shop window.)
Our hotel was amazing, we stayed at The Colonial Terrace Inn. A quaint little group of buildings a block away from the ocean. We slept with the windows open so we could hear the waves crashing on the coast while we slept.
Romantic Hideaways & Hotels at Expedia. Save even more when you book your flight and hotel together.
The next day we took the Mustang and headed back up to San Francisco on Highway 1. We did get lost at one point, and of course we didn’t have any cell phone reception, but we figured it out.
He seriously loved driving that Mustang.
(Obligatory Mustang selfie with a pretty scenic background.)
Highway 1 was seriously gorgeous. Doesn’t this picture look fake? Oh no, just the random view off the side of the highway.
Oh and the other side of the highway had a beautiful beach…with dolphins playing in it. We saw 5 dolphins playing with each other. Being able to see dolphins in the wild like that, it was definitely one of the coolest experiences of my life.
When we finally found our way to San Francisco, we quickly checked into our hotel. (I’m not even going to talk about how terrible the Hotel Whitcomb was, it was just a complete nightmare. We joked that it was taht bad to snap us out of our fancy vacation mode before returning home.)
We had just enough time to grab an Uber and head to Alcatraz before our cruise boarded.
Alcatraz is one of the coolest attractions ever (it’s actually a National Park now!) there is so much history in that prison, even though it was only open for 29 years. We took the audio tour, which points out a lot of areas where famous events happened (escape attempts, fights, etc.) and shows you certain cells where certain inmates called home.
As you can see, I wasn’t that angry to be in prison..
On our way back from the place we had dinner (I had Indian food!! I’m super proud of myself for branching out, but more about that in my restaurant recap,) we found @Twitter. How cool is that?
The next morning we journeyed to Alamo Square Park where we could see the Painted Ladies, those famous houses from the credits of Full House. I would recommend taking a cab there, because those hills are intense!
Written by, Brittany, the geek behind the blog. I share lots of recipes, my thoughts on the latest tech gadgets, my favorite geeky games, and snippets of life as a Work-at-home mom.