Hi everybody! I feel so bad. I'm missing a huge chunk in my blog. Oh by the way... Happy Thanksgiving! Merry Christmas! Happy St. Patrick's Day! Happy Easter! Happy Broken Wrist Day! Yup, I broke my wrist! I am currently wearing a purple cast. I will get it off in three days! Yay!!! While we're still not far from the topic of Easter...(Well I guess we're kind of far from the topic of Easter. Whatever.) Guess what my family did on Easter?! We drove!!! How exciting! Applause! Applause! But...guess where we drove to?! San Francisco, California! That's the exciting part. That's what deserves the applause. It was so good to be back in California! San Francisco was so amazing! I loved it! You're probably wishing I would hurry up tell you what we did and show you some pictures. So I will. Okay here it goes.
Day 1: We drove, and drove, and drove. When we got to San Francisco we found our hotel and walked to a Indian and Pakistani place for dinner. Then, we walked back to our maze-like hotel. (we could not find our room in that place - it was a giant maze I tell you - plus, they're determined to make sure you never find your car again) We got in bed and called it quits.
Day 2: That morning we ate breakfast at a little diner. I had a fabulous breakfast of cottage cheese. It was supposed to rain that day so we decided to head to this supposedly really good, hands on museum, the Exploratorium. However, it was closed so we walked around the Palace of Fine Arts. I took some really good pictures. Then, we walked along the beach. I took some nice pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge. One of them was even worthy to be our computer background. We headed back to our car and drove across the.......Golden Gate Bridge! The bridge was so amazing! It's kinda weird. It's just a man-made bridge, but it's soooo beautiful! After that, we accidentally got a thorough tour of the Sausalito neighborhoods. Then, we went to this viewpoint and took some closer pictures of the bridge. Next, we drove back to our hotel. We went down Lombard Street on the way there. After we parked our car, we hiked up one of those hilly streets to the cable car museum. The cable car museum was pretty interesting. It told all about the history of San Francisco's cable car system and how it works today. I got a really nice San Francisco t-shirt at the gift shop. Then, as Chad Lewis says, we "went right down to Chinatown." Chinatown was one of my favorite parts of San Francisco! It was just so interesting! If you ever do some good people-watching, go to Chinatown. We ate lunch/dinner at the best Chinese place ever! Mmmm! It's makes my mouth water just thinking about it. After that, we went into a few shops, and I bought a little Chinese character charm. According to the lady we asked, it meant "long life." After I bought my charm, we headed back to our hotel and called it a day.
Palace of Fine Arts
The Worthy Picture's (Almost) Clone
(Not actually the Worthy Picture-My dad likes this one better)
Picture from the Viewpoint
(See my family waaaay out there?)
Hanging out in Chinatown
Gateway to Chinatown
Look at my new friend!
Day 3: Cable car day! Hooray! Except the cable car part of our day didn't really turn out too great. You'll soon find out why. We bought pastries and ate them in Union Square. Then, we bought all day cable car passes and hopped on a cable car. I rode hanging off the side. It was fun! We rode all the way down to Fisherman's Wharf. We walked around Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39. Then, we walked down to Pier 33 and got on a boat to Alcatraz. My mom and I have read these fiction books about a boy who lived on Alcatraz in the 1930s so we were really excited to see it. We took an audio tour through the cell house. It was so good. We learned a ton of interesting things about Alcatraz. When we were done with the tour we got on a boat and headed back to the city. Back at Fisherman's Wharf, we found a place to buy clam chowder in bread bowls. Mmm. I discovered I like clam chowder! I really wanted to go to the Aquarium of the Bay. Travis didn't want to go though. We decided to split up. Mom and I went to the aquarium and Travis and Dad just walked around the beach. Mom and I really enjoyed the aquarium. You step on this moving walkway and it moves you through a tunnel in a giant tank. It feels like you're actually underwater. It was really cool! After the aquarium, Mom and I met up with the boys. Dad and I walked over to Ghiradelli Square while Travis and Mom waited for the cable car. I got a bowl of chocolate ice cream at Ghiradelli Square. It was really yummy. Then, we walked back to the cable car stop. We waited an hour and a half on the cable car. We just sat waiting for it to go. It never did. That cable car line had broken down! We eventually left and walked up the hill to Lombard Street. We then walked down Lombard Street and got lots of pictures. Then, my dad walked and Mom, Travis, and I rode the streetcar up Telegraph Hill (Dad beat us!). We arrived at Coit Tower and went up to the top. My dad and I took tons of pictures from the windows. After Coit Tower, we wandered around in search for a place to eat. Everything was closed! We eventually found a cable car that was running and we rode to the end of the line. We ended up in some obscure neighborhood. There we found a pizza place and decided to eat there(okay,we sort of had to eat there or I would have collapsed). Then we took a cable car part of the way and walked part of the way to our hotel. We all fell asleep immediately. We had had a long day.
Hanging from the Cable Car
(Notice my purple cast?)
View of the city from Alcatraz
Inside the Cell house 
Me standing in front of some jellyfish
(See my San Francisco t-shirt?)
Ghiradelli Square
Lombard Street
View of Downtown from Coit Tower
Coit Tower
Day4: Dad bought pastries and brought them to us in the hotel. We ate, checked out, and headed to Alamo Square. We walked around the park a little bit. Guess what I found just laying on the ground?! I found two 100 dollar bills! Two real Benjamin Franklins! I took some great pictures of those Victorian houses, the "Painted Ladies." Then, we drove over to Golden Gate Park. We walked through a section of the botanical gardens. Then, Dad, Travis, and I paid to go into the Japanese Tea Gardens. It was actually a pretty small garden, but Dad got some nice pictures. After that, we drove over to this little sandwich place called The Yellow Submarine. It was really good. We ate our sandwiches in this little park that looked over the city. After we finished our sandwiches we left San Francisco. We drove until we reached Tahoe, where we decided to stay for the night.
The "Painted Ladies" in Alamo Square
Japanese Tea Garden Bridge
Me and Travis under the Tea Garden shrine (I guess it's a shrine)
Lunch at Kite Hill overlooking San Francisco
Day 5: The next day we ate breakfast and left. We drove through the boring Nevada deserts all day. We stopped in Elko for a absolutely wonderful lunch at McDonald's. When we got home Minnie was right by the door. She missed us soooo much! I missed her too. It was good to see her again.
I loved San Francisco! I will never forget that trip. Thanks for reading this post about the Happy Halls!
