San Francisco Vacation | June 2016

Where to start? San Francisco has been on my bucket list of vacations forever! So glad we finally took the plunge and booked a vacation here as well as some other awesome spots in Northern California (I will be sharing some blog posts for those awesome locations as well). I can’t believe it has already been a month since we left for this amazing vacation!

For only having three days to try to see as much of San Francisco as possible I think we did pretty good! We stayed in Fishermans Wharf so it’s only expected with my obsession with animals that we stopped to see the famous Pier 39 Sea Lions first! Before we actually reached the spot where they were sunning I actually thought the sound was fake … I had no idea they were so loud! Touristy or not I loved them and Kevin had to drag me away from their cuteness! We actually spent most of our first day walking along the harbor and eating some pretty awesome seafood … the Dungeness crab is delicious!

Day two was our scheduled trip to Alcatraz Island. A little travel tip if you are planning to see Alcatraz Island and the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary you should plan on buying your tickets ahead. I tend to over plan so I booked our tickets as soon as I planned our vacation but I overheard the ticket counter telling people the tickets were sold out until July … and we were there the first week of June! But this is a MUST-SEE if you have never been and the self-guided audio tour is fantastic! A little awesome fact about Alcatraz Island that surprised me because I only associated Alcatraz with the prison is that it is actually a sanctuary for seabirds and we just happened to be there during nesting! Wait till you see the photos of the baby seabirds … ADORABLE!

And because we were not tired enough from Alcatraz we also took a boat tour that went under the Golden Gate Bridge and visited the Sutro Baths ruins, quite possibly a photographers DREAM golden hour location for it’s amazing light! A big thanks to the super talented Olivia Richards who captured our couples session at Lovers Lane and Bakers Beach for the recommendation! You can check out the photos from our couples session here!

And our last day before heading to our next stop in Carmel, California was filled with some other very important must-sees! Our first Trolley ride, Chinatown, Lombard Street and the “Painted Ladies” … because I was the biggest Full House fan and I could not imagine going to San Francisco without saying I saw them! So enjoy our adventures and be sure to check out our next blog post that follows our travels in Carmel, California!

Kev and I are such foodies so of course we stopped at the San Francisco Ferry Building Marketplace!

Alcatraz!! So creepy looking!

Because sometimes the nerd comes out in me, we followed along on a guided tour learning all about the seabirds of Alcatraz Island! But because of the nerd in me I now know that the staircase in the photo below was designed for a Warden’s Corgi to easily get up and down (check out how short the stairs are) and many of the seabirds nest in the same spots every year like the gull in the old fireplace below!

Baby gulls are the CUTEST!!!

Inside Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary!

Sutro Bath Ruins

Baby Seal!!!

Chinatown San Francisco

Lombard Street

The Painted Ladies and the house from Full House!

TO VIEW OUR TRAVELS TO BIG SUR, CARMEL, MONTEREY & MUIR WOODS CALIFORNIA: CLICK HERE!

TO VIEW OUR TRAVELS TO NAPA & SONOMA VALLEY CALIFORNIA: CLICK HERE!

TO VIEW MORE FROM OUR TRAVELS: CLICK HERE!