San Francisco and Pier 39

Heading over the Bay Bridge.

We took the Embarcadero, which takes you right down along the bay to all the different piers and a lot of the tourist areas. Sadly, we saw our first homeless person right away. If you look closely at what looks like a street vendor (like maybe he'd sell hotdogs, or something?) Well, that's actually a homeless person, with a huge load of stuff!

Pier 39 was really beautiful. Lots of fun shops, and food galore. This was on the upper portion, overlooking a lot of the stores. Off in the distance you can see the top of the double-decker carousel (the blue and white striped roof). We ate lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe. It was good, but super expensive!

Bailey took this one of Shawn and I.

Alcatraz

We went to the Aquarium at the Bay. It, too, was overpriced and not really worth the money, but fun to see everything nonetheless. I took this cool shot of these jellyfish with no flash, and no editing afterwards. I really like the way they look.

This was also taken without flash and no editing. So pretty. I wish the right side were brighter blue, but overall I like the way it turned out.

A little dark, and blurry (again ... no flash, so their movement gave me a blurry shot). If you click on the picture to enlarge it you can see Shawn in front, Austen behind him, Lauren and then Bailey. If you look to the right of Shawn (on the plexiglass) you can see Kale. This was accidental, but kind of neat that he ended up in there too. This was one of the cool tubes we got to walk through. Lots of cool fish, sharks and sea life to see.

We walked around a bit more, bought some souveniers for the girls, ate Dreyers ice cream, and then headed to the car. We drove around town some more. Down to where Ripley's and the wax museum are (would like to check those out another time!) And then Shawn drove us through China Town. Bailey has this fascination with all things Asian right now. It started when we went to Coloma, and she bought a fan. That was it. She was hooked. So she begged him to go to China Town and he kept saying Bailey you really don't want to go there, and she certainly agreed once we got to see it with our own eyes. Ick. I imagined it much more touristy. Instead, it's just a place where Chinese people live, and operate businesses, and really overall it looked kind of dirty (hate to say that, but it did). So, we got to see China Town and got that out of Bailey's system. Haha. Who knew? I guess it just shows how little I get out, huh?

Anyway, we then headed to the hotel in Santa Clara - the Hyatt Regency. I'll post the Great America photos next.