You Can’t Be Bored in San Francisco

San Francisco

January 8, 2020

Jenn:

It’s a new year and time for our next adventure! We are headed to the continent of Oceania (aka Australia). We decided to break up the incredibly long journey with a four-day stopover in San Francisco, CA.

We took off from Buffalo, NY just after noon and flew to SFO via JFK airport in New York City. We flew on JetBlue airline, which easily had the best planes and service we’ve experienced in our travels so far. The seats were large and comfortable with ample leg room. Even though it’s a discount airline, carry-on baggage allowance was generous. All seats have TVs with DirecTV service as well as a great movie selection, and all passengers can use free WiFi throughout the flight. Snack service has several free choices and drinks are served frequently, with full cans of pop provided without even being requested. On longer flights (our New York to San Fran flight), a self-serve snack pantry is provided with drinks and snacks available throughout the flight, between service times. I can’t recommend this airline enough! What a great experience!

Upon arrival in San Francisco, we took the air train to pick up our rental car. Luckily, there was no lineup, so we were quickly on our way to check in to our hotel for the next four nights.

January 9

Sam:

In the morning, we had the breakfast included with our stay and then drove to the “Painted Ladies” (a.k.a. the Full House house). We parked at the park next to the house and looked at it for a while.

We also wanted to check out the Mrs. Doubtfire house that was about a half hour walk down the street. There were a ton of hills in between us and the house, but we toughed it out.

We kept walking after we saw the house, because we saw that down the road was the bay. About halfway down a hill, we saw a side road that went down a bit then rose very steeply. It was an area called Nob Hill.

We walked down to the bay and immediately saw the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island and got splashed a bit by large waves. It is super windy near the water. We took an Uber back to our car.

Charlotte:

Then we started driving to the ice cream museum and finally found a parking lot. It took awhile because parking is hard to find here.

We went into the Museum of Ice Cream. I was so excited to try lots of snacks! We went down a magical portal (slide). Dad had a rough ride! At the bottom, the workers there greeted us and gave us pink cream sandwiches. The flavour was not strawberry though, it was pink vanilla! There were also make your own ornaments. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you: we got ice cream names but we got to choose our own. Mine was Strawberry Shortcake, Sam’s was Mint Chip, Mom’s name was Heavenly Hash, and Dad’s was Cherry Cheesecake.

In the next room, that was an old-fashioned diner, we were given “menus” with interesting facts about ice cream, and when we told the “waitress” what thing on the menu was the most interesting or weird to us, then we got pink hot chocolate. It was so good, but we couldn’t figure out what it tasted like.

We went to the next room where we got to respond to questions on the walls with magnet letters. There were also questions to answer on paper in the middle of the room. I did some drawings.

Then we went to the next room, where we got to make origami candy canes, Christmas trees, and ice cream cones.

After some pictures, there was a pink camel and a pink elephant that we could ride on. It was pretty silly, but we had fun. Sam peeked around the corner to the next room and told us we would love it.

We followed him there and found it had soft-serve ice cream cones that tasted like a candy cane. There were also unicorns in the room and rainbow walls. I rode both of them then we each got another ice cream cone (there was no limit!) and went to the next room.

Here you had to make your own snow (it wasn’t really snow) but we had to do a kind of dance following the instructions of the server. She gave us little containers and we could dip our ice cream from the unicorn room in the snow (dipping dots ice cream).

Finally, we went up the elevator and we got to a sprinkle pool! It had a slide and stairs and a diving board. The pool was full of big plastic “sprinkles.” We had to take our shoes off to go in. I played in it for more than an hour. Mom and Dad even tried it. It was a bit sore on our feet when we tried to walk in it, but laying in it felt really relaxing. I had so much fun, especially on the slide! There was also a place with swings. Mom and I went on them together.

Jenn:

The Museum of Ice Cream had lots of delicious treats and amazing “Insta-worthy” photo ops, but don’t expect any actually museum-type facts or displays. It was very expensive for what it was ($38US per person with no child discount) and full of millennials looking for new profile pics, but the kids had a great time, so I guess it was worth it.

Brad:

One of the things Jenn and I like to do whenever we’re in California is to get Mexican food. There aren’t a lot of good authentic Mexican places in Canada. Using TripAdvisor we I found a local place called “Taqueria San Bruno” that had great reviews. It was in an industrial area and was (quite honestly) a bit of a dive, but there were lots of people in there anyways, dining in and taking out, and we had a great time. We got cheese enchiladas, a massive steak burrito, quesadillas and a chicken taco.