If you’re just joining us, don’t miss Part 1 of our West Coast road trip adventure.

Day 4: July 3rd, 2012

Our first full day in San Francisco! We started the day in the Financial District, watching Serious Business people go to their Serious Business jobs. The architecture in the Financial District is stunning. (Apparently, I didn’t get my fill of big city architecture in Chicago. :D)

We bought passes for one of the 48-hour tour busses and shuttled ourselves around the city like the tourists we were. I was entranced by the floaty flower sculpture outside this government-looking building.

And we both loved the walk-in water sculpture:

And the CHOCOLATE:

This is as close as we got to Alcatraz. Yeah, we bucked time-honored tourist tradition and didn’t go. (They were sold out, and besides, prisons make me sad.)

This entire day was spent walking/bussing around the city looking at things. The last thing we did before bed: eating some Authentic Latino Food.

In this picture, Jim ceased to be Jim. He became an otherworldly burrito monster who knows no pain, no suffering, only burrito and his animalistic lust to consume. My suiza was pretty good, too.

Day 5: July 4th, 2012

We started the day early in Chinatown, which was awesome and absolute sensory-overload. The markets were my favorite thing. Those bins in the foreground are full of piles of dead, dried out fish.

I wanted to go in here so bad, but it looks like we got here too early. Yeah yeah! Pony Prince

San Francisco has a famous bridge, too, which was (unusually) fog-free for us:

 

We enjoyed the blinding winds on our trek across the bridge and down the beach.

From the bridge we walked to the Exploratorium, which was packed with every single person in San Francisco due to the July 4th holiday. The highlight was definitely the Tactile Dome, which we went through twice (once for srs and once using our cell phones as lights to find all its secrets). Super awesome and totally worth the extra cost, don’t miss it if you’re visiting the Exploratorium.

Our private Inn at Oyster Point retreat was the perfect place to hide out once the crowds poured in for the fireworks. From the room itself and the mile+ long path around the docks and bay, we saw the sun set and then watched several fireworks displays. This place was deserted, so this was pretty much our perfect 4th and a sweet way to spend our last night in San Francisco.

Tomorrow, we start the drive back to Seattle. You can read all about it in Part 3!