An Afternoon in Sausalito

On Tuesday morning, we started our day out at the Ferry Building. What used to be the main hub of boat traffic has been transformed into a combination of organic food stalls, California-made goods stores, and local restaurants. We browsed the stalls and shops wishing we had something of the sort back home. We purchased a bottle of wine, a sandwich from Boccalone (a.k.a. 'Tasty Salted Pig Parts), and a chocolate-lavender macaron to share.

The Ferry Building.

Inside the Ferry Building. A lot of the shops didn't open until 9 or 10 a.m.

Where we picked up lunch for the day. It was so good!

After dropping off our bottle of wine at the hotel, we made our way to the hop-on, hop-off bus, ready for a day of exploring the city. On the way to Sausalito, we saw the Palace of Fine Arts, Crissy Field, and some more beautiful view of the Golden Gate Bridge. We braved the wind on the top of a double-decker bus across the bridge and enjoyed the views of the bay, Angel Island, Alcatraz, and the city skyline.

Palace of the Fine Arts.
Each tour guide had a different explanation for why the women were turned inward, away from San Francisco.

Beautiful view of the Golden Gate Bridge with Marin Country California in the background.

Once in Sausalito, we split our sandwich in a shady spot by the water's edge. Then we explored the shops in downtown. After stopping in a few little shops, we stopped in Bacchus & Venus, where we did a tasting of red wines. We were treated to some yummy ones that we really enjoyed. We even joined a wine club that will send us two bottles of wine every month. At that point, we agreed that all of the wine that we bought on the trip we would drink together.

Enjoying wine at Bacchus & Venus.

Wine tasting selfie!

Before leaving Sausalito, we stopped in a cute little boutique and purchased some hats to keep the sun off our our faces.

Our tour guide stopped at a hilltop lookout point on the way back to San Francisco. It was beautiful and by far our favorite view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

We crossed the bridge back to San Francisco and rode the bus to Ghirardelli Square, where we enjoyed some more window shopping and perusing through boutiques. We particularly loved 'Lola's on North Beach." Everything was so cute. I could definitely get in trouble at that place! We checked out the Ghirardelli store and old factory before we headed back to our hotel for the evening.

Entrance to Ghirardelli Square.

Inside the old Ghirardelli chocolate factory, where they have a chocolate making set-up for display purposes.

Inside the old Ghirardelli chocolate factory,
where they have a chocolate making set-up for display purposes.

Once back at our hotel, we we broke into our bottle of wine purchased at the Ferry Building and enjoyed it with some cheese grapes. It was a nice relaxing evening after a long, exciting day!

Sunny Monday in San Francisco

On Monday, my mom and I spent the day touring the beautiful Bay City. We booked a hop-on, hop-off city tour that would allow us to see all of the big sights without having to walk a ton or pay too many cab fares. We did end up doing a lot of walking, though!

Coit Tower.

We started the morning down at Fisherman's Wharf and hopped on the bus to start our adventure. We briefly stopped at Coit Tower to snag some photos of the firefighter-inspired landmark. 

From there, we took the bus to check out the notorious 'Painted Ladies' hidden amongst the blocks and blocks of beautiful Victorian houses. Thankfully, since they line Alamo Square, they weren't too difficult to fine. The tourists snapping photos are also dead giveaway for the Full House home.

The Victorian homes in San Francisco are absolutely beautiful. There are over 13,000!

We hopped back on the double-decker and made our way to Golden Gate Park, where we enjoyed the beautiful and serene Japanese Tea Garden. This place was seriously a tiny wonderland buried inside a bustling city. Between the koi-filled ponds and the pagodas, this place was just phenomenal. If you're stopping by the Golden Gate Park, this is a must-see!

Japanese Tea Garden inside of Golden Gate Park.

Enjoying the beautiful day at the Japanese Tea Garden.

Next, the bus dropped us off at a spot on the coast where Sutro Baths used to stand, now tourists can visit the ruins. We didn't originally plan to stop here, but the view was irresistible! Near Cliff House, we had wonderful views of the beach, Seal Rock, and the Golden Gate Bridge. 

Panoramic view of the ocean directly above the ruins of the Sutro Baths. 

Our view of the Golden Gate Bridge from Point Lobos. It was stunning.

The final stop before dinner was Chinatown. We entered through the Dragon Gate and walked our way up Grant Street before checking out some alleyways, including Ross Alleyway, where the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Company is nestled. There, we watched some Chinese women make homemade fortune cookies in an astoundingly quick and effective manner. We were impressed to say the least. We both spent a few dollars to create some personalized fortune cookies to take home as gifts. Stopping in this place is a must while in Chinatown!

Dragon Gate- the main entrance to Chinatown on Grant Street.

Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Company.

Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Company. She's folding our personalized fortunes into cookies.

We wrapped up the evening with dinner at The Stinking Rose, a garlic-centric restaurant in Little Italy. Oh my goodness, it was so delicious! We split a half bottle of red wine and dug into our bread and garlic pesto after a long day. The 40-Clove Roasted Chicken was the perfect way to top off the day. 

The Stinking Rose in San Francisco. Delicious Italian food with plenty of Garlic!

We were once again exhausted after a long day, but it was also totally worth it! After day 1 of our hop-on, hop-off we were looking even more forward to day 2!

Sonoma Wine Country

On our first full day in San Francisco, we actually weren't in San Francisco. We woke up bright and early (6:15!!) on Sunday and got ready for the day. We enjoyed breakfast at the hotel restaurant, making sure to get some protein in our stomachs before before we hit the wine!

The mini bus we took out to Sonoma Valley on Sunday. 

We booked this tour through Viator, but the name of the tour service was Green Dream Tours. Our bus driver and tour guide, Rainey, picked us up in a mini bus at 8:30 a.m. and we headed north towards wine country. On the 45-minutes drive, she explained to us the history of wine country, the process of wine making, and steps of wine tasting.

Stop #1- Homewood Winery.

The first of the small, boutique wineries that we visited was Homewood Winery. They purchase grapes from various growers and produce wine with those grapes. They said that allows them to make several different variety of wines without having to specialize, especially since they did not have a lot of property. We tasted six different wines and it was just 10 a.m.! The wine was great and the scenery was wonderful, however, the man that led our wine tasting, Bob, was less than pleasant. I'm the end, the wine won us over and we ended up purchasing a bottle of two different red blends. They were the weekend special, so we purchased the for a total of $28! 

Homewood Winery.

After wrapping up at Homewood, we hopped back on our mini-bus with 10 other people (all couples) and made a quick 10-minute drive to the Larson Family Vineyard. We loved, loved, loved this vineyard. The land for the vineyard was previously a ranch and was purchased by the Larson family. We were greeted in the shop by guests enjoying the Larson's adorable and lazy dogs. They were curled up with the children of guests who had found a place on the floor. The tasting was out back in a picnic-like setup. We tried 5 of their yummy wines, including a "3 Lab Cab" an ode to their furry friends. 

Stop #2- Lasrson Family Winery. 

In the vineyard at Larson Family Winery.

Rainey picked up sandwiches from a local deli and we scarfed down some delicious turkey sandwiches before heading out. By that time, 11 wine pours in, we were needing it! Then, we re-boareded the bus and headed to the quaint downtown Sonoma where we had an hour to explore and window shop. 

Sonoma City Hall.

We went into a few boutiques and grabbed an ice cream to split while we walked around the square. Rainey pointed us in the direction of a chocolate shop that makes handmade truffles and allows you to try their ganache and chocolate. While we were scoping out truffles, one of the sales women saw my Aggie Ring and sparked a conversation about the Aggies in her family. It's really fun to see the Aggie Network everywhere, even when it is least expected! 

The chocolate shop where I encountered
a fellow member of the Aggie Family. 

The final stop on our trip was the Nicholson Ranch, where the view was wonderful and the wine was tasty! We couldn't say 'no' to the merlot that we tasted there, it was so smooth, that we ended up going home with a bottle. No regrets about that purchase!

Nicholson Ranch.

After finishing up at the final winery, we hopped back on the bus and braved the traffic back to San Francisco. To keep everyone happy and subdued, Rainey broke out a bottle of "emergency wine" as soon as we hit the traffic around the north side of the bridge. It took us about an hour and a half to get back to the hotel, where we relaxed the rest of the evening and plotted when we would consume our three new bottles of wine!

Our "post-wine tour" picture. Not too much worse for wear!

San Francisco Vacation

My mom has been eyeing a trip to San Francisco and the nearby wine country for a while now. After seeing how much fun Kellie had on her visit to the Bay City, my mom and I decided a visit was a must! We planned for a week during the summer when my work has relatively calmed down.

Fight from Houston to San Francisco.

We caught a flight on Saturday morning and made it to San Francisco around 1:30 p.m., plenty of time to do some exploring. We checked into our hotel, Le Meridien, in the Financial District and put put bags into the room.

Our hotel in the Financial District- Le Meridien.

We grabbed a light jacket, since we'd been warned several times that it was going to be chilly, and hit the road. We grabbed a quick taxi over to Fisherman's Wharf and explored the sights.

Fishermans Wharf in San Francisco. 

We walked down Hyde Pier and saw some restored historical ships and got our first view of Alcatraz. We made our way west on Fisherman's Wharf and stopped in a few shops, including Boudin. We loved the fun-shaped sourdough bread loaves and decided that we must make another stop before we headed home to grab some bread souvenirs. 

Finally, we made our way to Pier 39 where we checked out the shops and fought the crowds. We grabbed dinner on the second floor of the pier at a restaurant called Mango's Taqueria & Cantina. We went for the margaritas, to be honest... and they were worth it!

Our margaritas and chips and salsa at Mango's. 

We even had a little visitor at dinner. ;) As soon as the table behind us cleared out, he showed up to scarf down some of their chips. He may look cute in the picture, but he was gigantic! Much bigger than any sea gull we see here in Texas!

Our dinner visitor!

After dinner, we purchased some fruit from a little farmers market and caught a taxi back to our hotel, where we unpacked and promptly passed out! 

It was a wonderful first day in San Francisco and we couldn't wait to get the rest of our trip underway. 

Port #3: Cozumel

Our third and final stop on the cruise was in Cozumel, Mexico. It was the third port in three days, so Catherine and I were exhausted and relieved that arrival time was later than the previous days. Our excursion was also in the afternoon, so we had plenty of time to sleep in and then go explore afterwards. 

By the time Catherine and I had finished breakfast and headed back to our stateroom to prepare to get off the ship, we'd docked in port. While I was out on our balcony I snagged this selfie with the incredibly blue water. The water in Cozumel was crystal clear, but this water was beautiful and blue and I couldn't wait to go swimming in it later. 

Where we docked in Cozumel. We walked around the shops along the shore on the right.

We debarked the ship around 11am and headed down the dock to the shops and restaurants. We were on the constant search for sun screen. We'd already gone through 5 or 6 spray on bottles of the stuff and had just finished off our supply. The first store we walked into was selling sunscreen for $29 each. Needless to say, we continued to look in other stores.

We checked out the shops along the street that ran next to the shore. We poked our heads into a few stores, but I don't think either of us really bought anything. We did find a really fun bar that we stopped in, called Mr. Chile's. The bar stools had been replaced by swings- what a fun/ unique idea!

We ordered some cheap beers and ate some chips and "queso." Anyone who knows us knows that we can't turn down ordering queso when we get Mexican/Tex-Mex food. We thought, what better place to order it than in Mexico. However, it was not exactly what we were used to or hoping for.

A guy (who we think worked there?) started making balloon hats for everyone sitting at the bar. Catherine got a balloon crown and I got some hat contraption that came fully equipped with earrings! You should have seen the looks we were getting afterwards while we were walking along the streets shopping.

After an hour or two walking around, we made our way back to the ship to grab some free lunch and take a short nap. Our excursion didn't start until 3pm, so we had plenty of time to spare and we were just so exhausted, we wanted to relax a little bit before we went snuba diving.

Snuba= half-way between scuba diving and snorkeling. Just like scuba diving, except instead of each of us having our own air tank, the four of us shared one air tank that was on a raft at the surface of the water.

We left the ship again around 2:30 and found our excursion meeting point after finally tracking down some sun screen (for just $14 too!). There were just four of us in our group, so we got a lot of one-on-one time with our snuba instructor.

We swam up to 20 feet deep and saw all sorts of neat sea creatures like a speckled sting ray, a black and white spotted moray eel, and a little sea horse. It was fun, but I had to think a lot while doing it so I didn't accidentally breathe through my nose and then panic because I couldn't breathe. Catherine really enjoyed it and said she wants to learn how to scuba dive before next time! :)

Overall, Cozumel was a really great experience! We had a great time snuba diving and enjoyed our last excursion before heading back to Texas.

Port #2: Grand Cayman

Laying in bed last Wednesday evening, I reflected on how long the day seemed. I was exhausted and Catherine and I were in bed by 11:00 and passed out quickly. We'd woken up around 6:30 that morning to the sight of us docking in Grand Cayman's bay, surrounded by 5 other ships. One of the other ships was the Royal Caribbean's 'Oasis," that carries over 6,000 passengers. That's almost twice the number of passengers that our measly little Carnival Freedom can hold.

View from our balcony when we woke up in the morning. Shore of Grand Cayman in the distance.

Three other ships that we were joined by in that morning when we docked at Grand Cayman.
There were others on the other side of the ship as well.

After quickly dressing and spraying ourselves with copious amounts of sunscreen (seriously, at this point we'd already blown through like four bottles of the spray-on variety), we boarded a "tinder boat" and made our way to the island. There we met up with the excursion group, were given our "cranberry" colored wristbands, and herded to a mini van that drove us to our destination, Dolphin Cove. That day we'd signed up to partake in the "Dolphin Swim and Sting Ray City" excursion - thank you again mom and dad for this wonderful Christmas present! :)

View of the Carnival Freedom from the dock at Grand Cayman.

The very well trained parrots that met us when we
arrive at our sting ray and dolphin adventure.

The "cranberry" (they were really just red, but I guess they wanted to make us feel special?) wristband group headed out to Sting Ray City first. We hopped on (yet another) boat and took a 30-minute ride out to the sandbar populated by all the sting rays. All the while I was having visions of a Steve Erwin-like incident taking place. I'd also seen too many sting ray episodes of 'River Monsters' to not at least have a healthy appreciation for the damage that barb can do when the ray puts his mind to it.

Sting Ray City.

The water at sting ray city was waist deep and crystal clear. Seriously, crystal clear... the pictures don't even do it justice. Catherine and I seized the opportunity to hold and kiss a sing ray and got some pretty sweet pictures as well. I also managed to get some pretty cool pictures on the GoPro (thank you again, Kellie!). There were some serious monster rays out there!

That's my leg! Ahhh!

Catherine and I holding a large sting ray.

Pucker up!

After about 45 minutes to an hour, our tour guide blew his whistle calling us back to the boat. It wasn't until after I'd reboarded out boat that Catherine let me know that our "sting ray handler" (guy on the right side of the photos above) had been stung in the ankle/lower calf area. Catherine said his wound didn't look too serious and the guide was all bandaged up and in good spirits on the way back, so I figured he was okay. He's been doing this for 30+ years and he said he hadn't been stung since the mid-80s.

 I took this picture shortly after getting out of the water at Sting Ray City. In my mind, it's the best representation of how beautiful the water was:

After taking our boat back to Dolphin Cove, we swam with dolphins. Our dolphin's name was 'Sally' and she was 11 years old. We got dolphin kisses and belly rides, but no pictures because they wanted to charge an arm and a leg for them. I think I'll stick to the memories and hold onto that $100, thank you very much.

The big tank where we swam with dolphins.

After our mini van drive back to the port area, Catherine and I grabbed lunch and drinks and 'Breezes' and enjoyed the view from the second deck while I perused photos I'd taken on the GoPro. I was pretty surprised at how well they turned out, particularly because most of the time I didn't know quite what I was aiming at.

View from the patio at 'Breezes.' Our ship was to the far right behind some of that heavy equipment.

After lunch, we did some quick shopping and took the tinder back to the ship. I was exhausted and may or may not have fallen asleep on the tinder while waiting for everyone in front of us to disembark, which is a feat considering how rocky the boat was.

Once back aboard, I took a nap and we walked around the ship before showering and prepping for another "elegant night" dinner. As always, it was delicious!