Weekend in San Francisco

We only had three days, but we made the most of them in California to visit my Aunt Marty (dad's oldest sister) and Uncle David. As usual, they were absolutely fantastic hosts and gave us the grand tour of the San Francisco area even with our short time frame.

After getting in late Friday night (I feel like everywhere we go, we always get in at some incredibly inconvenient time), we were up bright and early for an adventure in wine country. My cousin Megan (not totally positive how we're related, so cousin is what I'm going with) works at one of the vineyards in Napa, and arranged for us to go on a tour of the winery. 

The only time I'll follow strangers into a cave

I have to confess, my wine palate is not very well developed (I prefer anything that tastes like juice) and I was a little nervous about trying all of these California reds, but I figured that I couldn't NOT try all the wine. Not surprisingly, it was all delicious. 

After lunch with Megan and my aunt and uncle, we said goodbye to Megan and continued our grand tour of the Napa Valley, including the town my uncle was born in. We saw downtown Napa, tons of vineyards and other landmarks, plus the beautiful California countryside. 

We swapped the country for the city on Sunday, spending the entire day in San Francisco. We stumbled upon a gorgeous national cemetery in the Presidio and enjoyed some great views of the bay before meeting up with Simon, our first friend in Denver. He has since moved to San Francisco, but he was the person who opened his house up to us when we first moved here. Simon and Billy had a lot of fun catching up while Simon gave us a tour of the city.

If you think their smiles looked forced, it's because I forced them to take this picture to commemorate our time together. Great scenery I captured...a creepy H&M mannequin.

We parted ways with Simon mid-day so we could get our tourist on. We hopped on a cable car and rode up and over one of San Fran's GIANT hills and got dropped off right at Fisherman's Wharf, the ultimate tourist trap. It was fun to walk through it, but we were glad we didn't make it a major part of the day. We caught the ferry back to Tiburon, which was the perfect end to our city trip.

It was a liiiiitle windy on the ferry.

We wrapped up our last night by gorging ourselves on seafood and more amazing wine with my aunt and uncle before calling it a night. We were lucky to have a late flight out of San Francisco on Monday, so we went on a great tour of the area with my aunt the next morning before heading to Battery Spencer (an old military area) for some spectacular views of the Golden Gate.

After taking in the incredible coastal scenery, we made our final stop in Sausolito to have lunch with my uncle before saying goodbye. I can't do the trip justice in a blog post as much as I try - it was such a phenomenal visit and I can't thank my Aunt Mary and Uncle David enough for having us! 

Saying goodbye all too quickly