Friday night P and I stayed up far too late finishing the last few episodes of
Lost. We were tired but excited Saturday morning when we left for our trip. We took 4 of the kids to stay with my sister,
T for the day. My mother-in-law had agreed to watch them Sunday and Monday. Our 15 year old, her friend, and the twins were coming with us to San Francisco. We met the couple we were traveling with at the airport and headed off. The flight was uneventful, although I wished that Indigo would fall asleep so I could take a nap.
We arrived at the Oakland Airport and caught a shuttle to the BART station. I should mention at this point that Phil and I and the teenagers were carrying 7 bags between us, the twins, and a double stroller. Getting on and off of the shuttle, and then on and off of the BART system was a major pain. By the time we arrived in San Francisco we were already tired and grumpy. We then walked several blocks uphill to our
hotel.
The hotel was nice enough, but we quickly realized that staying at a fancy hotel isn't all that great when you can't afford to use the amenities. The 6 of us were in one room, which was smaller than it looked on their website. The bathroom didn't have a fan or a lock on the door, and when the bathroom doors were pulled shut there was a 1/2" gap between them which meant there was no such thing as true privacy. No secret rendezvous in the bathroom for us on this trip.
We dropped the teenagers and babies off at the hotel and headed out for dinner. We went to
The Cheesecake Factory, but the wait was two hours and we were hungry. So we ended up eating elsewhere and taking cheesecake home for dessert. I fell asleep almost immediately while Phil and the girls stayed up watching movies.
Neither of us slept well that night, as the babies were up a lot in the night and I was feeling miserable due to all the walking and my stomach really cramping. When morning came I felt horrible and debated staying in bed for the day while the others went sight seeing.
Instead I decided to go along, and after breakfast at
Lefty O'Doul's, we rode the cable car first to Ghirardelli Square where we had ice cream sundaes and then walked down Fisherman's Wharf. We visited lots of fun shops, like
Crazy Shirts, where I splurged on a hemp dyed Haight Ashbury shirt that I will probably never wear in public since I got so much flak for buying it. P got me a fairly large blue pearl at
The Pearl Factory and we did a lot of walking and window shopping. It was fun but after 9 hours of walking, I was exhausted and everything hurt. I was in a lot of pain when we came home.
We changed clothes and went to dinner at
The Daily Grill, which was delicious and filling. Afterwards we walked around some more, window shopping, until I couldn't move another step.
That night was slightly better than the first, but the babies still did not sleep well (maybe because they were in separate cribs, instead of in bed with us!) and P and I did not get much sleep once again.
Monday morning P had a conference to attend so in the morning I stayed at the hotel. Right before noon P came back and we checked out, then he went back to the conference, leaving me with the teenagers and the twins and several hours to kill.
I had fun visiting stores I've long wanted to see, like
Lush,
Marc Jacobs, and
Neiman Marcus. I wanted to go into
Hermes and
Louis Vuitton but was intimidated by the atmosphere and the fact that there were no other customers in the showroom. We ate lunch at an overpriced diner that took forever to bring our food, and walked around for several hours while the girls shopped. In the afternoon Phil and the other couple joined us and we walked around some more.
By 6:00 p.m. I'd been walking for 6 hours, my bones were aching, and it was raining. The babies were fussing and very unhappy about spending so much time in their stroller. We had planned to do the whole BART/shuttle thing but at the last minute went with an airport shuttle which was a huge relief. We arrived at the airport in plenty of time; the babies were fussy and cried a bit but finally fell asleep on the plane. We arrived in Salt Lake City exhausted and nearly froze to death in the airport parking lot hunting for our keys. It was after midnight when we left the airport and what would normally be an hour and a half drive took substantially longer since we had to pull over every 15 minutes and take a catnap.
The trip was a nice break but I'm so tired I think I need a vacation from my vacation.
