The West Coast is calling my name… hello San Francisco

Confession time.

I’ve never been to the West Coast.

I mean, Joe likes to tell me that our stopover flight at LAX on the way to Hawaii for our honeymoon counts, but I don’t think so. My definition of visiting somewhere is um, physically leaving the airport. Maybe? (I should probably do a Twitter poll on this in the future)

So with a couple of weeks stateside… we wanted to book a holiday.

You see, we had a couple of vouchers from our previous trip home at Christmastime when snow storms caused all sorts of chaos and there was a miscommunicated booking from the airline… SO. They gave us a bunch of cash and we had a year to spend it.

And what better free money to get than airline money? Travel is the best gift, am I right?

We pondered over Los Angeles and exploring southern California before coming up with the oh so brilliant plan of visiting San Francisco and Napa Valley. I know. 

With a quick visit to New York City under our belts, we got up way too early on a Wednesday morning and set out for Newark airport for our next long haul flight.

New York to San Fran.

With only a slight hitch about a plane malfunction (because that’s what you want to hear at 6am), we ended up on our way (on a totally different plane) just an hour behind schedule.

Fine by us!

We arrived in San Francisco with ease, and made it to the hotel well before check in time. And because we were celebrating our anniversary, the kind staff at the Hyatt San Francisco gave us $50 to spend at the hotel! WAHOO. They aren’t allowed to put champagne or wine in rooms anymore apparently so this was them compensating. A great touch, so they already had bonus points in my eyes.

Still, the room wasn’t ready so we popped outside for some lunch.

We stayed right along the San Francisco Ferry Plaza.

That’s exactly what it’s called of course.

After an afternoon of lunching and finally checking into our room, we went out to explore the city. Full of all kinds of jet lag and tired feet from New York City, we were slightly struggling.

But we made it look good you know.

The San Francisco Ferry Pier is right across the street from the Hyatt Regency Hotel.

Inside it’s filled with little restaurants and markets, but more on that later.

We stopped to admire the views on the other side.

We wandered around the port before getting cold and deciding it was time to find a cute little restaurant.

Um. Well you know best laid plans and all that? Yes, we ended up just walking around the city for a solid hour and a half just looking at everything.

There’s so much to see that we got a little too absorbed and before we knew it we’d done a full loop back to the port.

Oops.

By that time, we decided that all we truly needed in life was a meat and cheese tray with a big carafe of wine.

Plus, sports were on, so you know that was a big time winner for Joe.

I’d say it was a hugely successful first day in the west, don’t you?

Kelly xoxo