Playing tour guide in San Francisco

Because Lauren had never been to San Francisco, I got to do one of my favorite things... play tour guide!

After we finished up with the Foodbuzz brunch, we set out for a long day of sight seeing and walking. Walking from the restaurant, we walked up Fifth Street, past the San Francisco Chronicle building and up to Market Street... which we quickly found out was closed due to the San Francisco Veterans' Day Parade. It's a good thing the giant mall is there, we ducked in through the doors, went down stairs and through the BART station and up the other side of Market. Lauren remarked how nice the BART station was and as I giggled to myself, I told her that's because this is one of the nicer stations... she should see some of the others.

We walked straight up Powell to Union Square, stopping at the bottom of Powell so Lauren could take a couple photos of the cable car turn around.

After asking Lauren if she wanted to walk the short way (straight up the Powell Street hill and over to the Pier) or the long way (along the Embarcadero), we decided to split the difference and walk through the financial.

*side note... the people begging on the street are getting mighty creative with their signs. I didn't take a picture of it and had to turn away to laugh because the sign said "Laugh if you masturbate." Yes, really, it said that.

So, anyway, Lauren and I walked to Pier 39, and saw the stinky, smelly sea lions, then ate some wonderfully delicious donut holes covered in cinnamon and sugar, and headed west toward the Golden Gate Bridge. After taking some photos of the Bridge from Fort Mason, we hiked up to Ghirardelli Square, where we went into Kara's Cupcakes (and only looked). We went into the Ghirardelli Chocolate Shoppe, where upon entering were handed a peppermint bark chocolate square. Heading to the other side of the Square, we went into the OTHER Chocolate Shoppe and got ANOTHER peppermint bark square... and ordered a hot fudge sundae. It's been a really long time since I've had a real hot fudge sundae, and this was so good, I could have eaten a hundred of them. But, like good girls who are watching what we eat, we shared it.

We headed back down to Fisherman's Wharf, where Lauren took more photos, and then walked back to the hotel to pick up our bags of stuff. We hopped on BART back to the other side of the Bay, and then headed back to Sacramento.

We had a blast, and can't wait to do it again!