The Westover Family Blog: San Francisco day one

Welcome to San Francisco Westover family! At the VERY last minute, we decided to take a family trip to the City by the Bay. (Casey was going to go with his cousin Jared alone but then decided to take all of us! We of course, said yes!) We packed a TON of adventure into two short days and we left with lots of amazing memories. Here is what we crammed (and I mean crammed) into day one.

8:00 a.m. Golden Gate Bridge in the early morning.

Unfortunately, because we decided to walk the bridge so early, they bay was still covered in fog and that meant that the bridge was also partially covered. We walked it anyway and got a few good views of the city from the bridge as the fog began to lift. What a marvel of engineering this bridge is!

the fog began to lift as we headed back across the bridge.

10:00 a.m. Little kids to the zoo, big kids to the Walt Disney Family Museum

Let's start with the two little ones, Allison and Lydia. I had the opportunity to take these cuties to the absolutely fabulous San Francisco Zoo. It is my new favorite zoo! It wasn't too giant (like San Diego) and it was clean and easy to navigate. It was also affordable (unlike San Diego).

Allison and Lydia sat upon every single statue they could find

The animals at this zoo were incredible. Because the temperature was so cool, they were up and moving around. My girls LOVED the tiger in particular.

And, more statues

While we enjoyed the zoo, the older girls and Casey truly enjoyed the Walt Disney Family Museum. As you may know, we are a Disney family. Charlotte and Casey are particularly obsessed. So, when we found out that this museum was here in San Fran, they had to go!

They got to see so many neat things that can only be found in that museum. One of them was the display case with all of the awards that Disney earned in his lifetime.

Of course, because my oldest is obsessed with Oswald the Lucky rabbit, the girls were on the hunt to find anything Oswald. They were not disappointed.

This is the park bench that Walt sat on as he watched his daughter ride a merry go round long ago. It was not in a good part of town and Walt dreamed of creating a place that children AND parents could find happiness. So, this bench is essentially where Disneyland was born.

After the museum, Casey made the girls walk over to the Presidio area of San Fran in order to see the Yoda statue. They walked FOREVER with the promise of the amazing Yoda statue. When they got there, they said, "That's it?" It was indeed lifesize...but Yoda is a pretty small dude.

They stopped along the way to see some sights. This is part of the Rotunda in downtown.

1:00 p.m. After our separate adventures, we met back up and walked down to Fisherman's Wharf.

Our hotel was just a few blocks from the Wharf so we made our poor kids walk the whole way. They did it with minimal complaining but we knew that we were going to have to bribe them to get them to walk back up the hills to our hotel after we were done.

One such bribe was two loaves of sourdough! It was so good. I think Charlotte ate almost an entire loaf on her own.

In the top right hand corner of this picture is Alcatraz. We wanted to take a boat ride out there but we ran out of time (and money.)

3:00 pm: After our crazy day of walking, we treated the girls to an early dinner at the Rainforest Cafe. We had been to this restaurant once before in Florida and the kids were thrilled to check out the San Francisco restaurant.

We had a nice meal while enjoying periodic thunderstorms, rainshowers and animatronic animals that made noises the whole way through dinner. The kids loved it.

When we came out of dinner, we saw these two "metal men" performing on the street. We watched for a while and then got bored.

Remember how I said we needed to bribe our kids with something to get them to walk back to the hotel? This is how we did it!

6:00 p.m. :The Ghirardelli Chocolate Square is near the Fisherman's Wharf and was on our way back up to the hotel. We stopped in at the restaurant and each girl got a giant ice cream to eat while they walked.

It worked like a charm and before we knew it, they were all back in the hotel, exhausted and ready for bed!

While the kids slept, we left Charlotte in charge and did some touring of our own.

9:00 p.m. We drove through Chinatown and then tried to get to the highest hill we could find so we could see the city at night. We took some great shots.