We flew down on Friday afternoon. It's a pretty painless 2 - 2.5 hour flight, but unfortunately we got stuck circling the airport for an hour waiting for Obama to land in Air Force One. We got some good views of the bay and the city, though.
We stayed at the Westin St Francis right downtown next to union square. The location was great, because almost everything is right there. The room they gave us was small and crappy, but after complaining the next morning, they upgraded us to a bigger room with a view.
There was lots of construction everywhere which made it harder to get around, but for the most part we were able to walk around pretty easily. Friday night we went shopping, stopped for drinks at a couple of places, and went for dinner at a small Italian place around the corner.
The location sent us by the company was wrong, so we thought we could walk about 30 minutes to the pier at a leisurely rate... but it took us 30 minutes in the wrong direction! We had to sprint to catch a rickshaw, and still made it to the right pier late. Luckily, they still let us on the next boat across.
Alcatraz was awesome. Spooky, epic, moody... full of history. It was a lot more fun than I expected, with beautiful views on the island of the bay, complete with fog rolling in over the Golden Gate bridge. Being able to go into the cells and get a view of how small and cramped they were... and seeing the holes some inmates dug out with spoons and escaped (these tiny little openings!) was amazing.
We caught the boat back, and headed back to the hotel for an amazing dinner. Lobster pot pie -- a full lobster in a pot, with veggies and covered in a pastry topping, was amazing. We didn't have reservations, so we ended up eating at the bar, which was fun.
Sunday we went to see the "painted ladies," which is a row of classical victorians popularized on the "full house" TV show. Lame. But the park was good, and we walked through some residential areas to get a feel for San Fran.
That night we went to Bourbon & Branch, a prohibition-style speakeasy that you needed to bang on a door and use a password to get in. Drinks were good, very dark inside, and when we exited, they let us out through a secret bookshelf door into an adjoining library! Very fun. We went back to the hotel for dinner (turned out to be one of the best restaurants in town) and crashed.
Monday morning we did some more shopping, and headed home! Missed the kids, and was happy to be home.
The good in San Fran: historic, good walking, good food.
The bad: downtown is a concrete jungle, poor service everywhere, very expensive.
The ugly: aggressive homeless everywhere, and the locals seemed to be very pissed off at tourists all the time.
