Day 1: Lombard, Coit Tower, and Ghiradelli

Well I didn't get any sleep last night haha. I stayed up watching everything I could about San Francisco, because I've been dreaming about this trip for so long! And so we woke up bright and early this morning and got ready! Then we hopped in the car and took off for the airport! We parked in the outside lots and took the bus to the terminal. Then we waited for a bit for grandma and grandpa, and then they came and we got all checked in, and then we went and sat outside of our terminal. All of us had seats separate from each other on the plane, and all of the seats were middle seats. A little unfortunate haha. So we got some snacks and we sat and waited. A very cute guy sat down across from us, but he ended up leaving on a flight to Texas haha. And then finally we started to board the plane, and my seat was supposed to be in the middle, but it was a father and son in the other two seats and so they let me sit in the aisle seat! Score! They were super nice! And like 5 minutes into the flight, I fell asleep haha. I even missed when they asked if we wanted snacks. I was so tired haha. And then we landed and we got all of our luggage and we went and picked up our rental car! The lady that showed us to our rental car was seriously hilarious! She said she had worked there for like 19 years, and she was just so funny! And now we were all really hungry (me especially because I missed the snacks :/ haha). We asked a lady where we could find some good food, and she had a really strong accent, and it sounded like she said we could find food on a street named Hamburger haha. But it ended up not being named Hamburger haha. And so we drove around and finally found a Subway. After driving so long, it was the best tasting food in the world haha. And then we went to find our hotel. We drove over the Oakland bridge, which has two levels!! We drove on the top level this time, and we drove around to find our hotel. And throughout this day of driving we learned three things. 1. There are almost no left turns. 2. There are a lot of one way streets. 3. People cross the street whenever they want and as slowly as they want. Haha. And so we finally found our hotel and it was um... a little sketchy haha. And they told us we had to come back later, because the rooms weren't ready. So we decided we were going to go find touristy things. So we first went to Lombard Street. This was one of my favorite parts of the whole trip! If you don't know what it is, it's called the crookedest street in the world, because it goes back and forth, and you can drive your car down it! It was awesome! And the street is just really beautiful and clean, and the houses on the sides of the street are awesome! So colorful and the flowers are so pretty! And so then we parked and walked up the street to take pictures! And we also saw wild parrots all perched in this huge tree. They were super colorful! And then we hopped in the car and drove to these streets, one took us almost straight up haha, we were all screaming because it was scary but hilarious! And then we pulled up to this street and you're looking out over it, and it looked like the edge of the world! You couldn't see where the road went down! We almost backed up, because it was like a 45 degree angle down, but we went on it and it was so fun haha. The streets are crazy there! And then we went to Coit Tower. It's like a memorial for firefighters, and you can go to the top to see the whole city, but the wait was super long, so we just looked around outside. They had these binocular things that you pay like 25 cents for and you could look out across the bay, so that was cool! And then we went back to the hotel and checked in, our rooms were not close to each other. And we unpacked our stuff. The rooms weren't too bad, just really old! And we were just kind of scared that the car was going to get broken into haha. And so we went to grandma and grandpas room and decided we weren't going to stay there, because it was a really bad environment. And so we took a while to call and get refunded and then we found an awesome deal through Hotwire, and we ended up booking the Hilton for way cheap haha. The Hilton! That's crazy haha. And so then we got back in the car and we drove to Ghiradelli square, which was so cute! We went and they gave us free chocolate and we got icecream, which was so good! And we went and walked around down by the bay. It was so pretty, but so windy haha. Grandpa sat on a bench while we walked out on a pier. And then we started to see swimmers in the bay and we were just like WHAT! It's freezing out there, but there were swimmers everywhere!! My grandma called out to an older gentlemen swimming to ask if he was okay and he was like "Yeah! This is my favorite place in the world!" Haha. He didn't even have a wetsuit on, but he said the water was brisk haha. People are crazy that's for sure! And it started to get late, so we walked back to our car and we drove around trying to find a place to eat, we finally decided on this little diner called Mel's diner, and it took us forever to find parking. Oh yeah, that's another thing we learned: There is like no parking, and if there is parking, it costs so so much. Anyway, we walked over the Mel's diner, it was a little scary, but we made it, and Mel's diner was so cute! And I thought the food was great!! It was a good time! And then walking back to our car was even scarier. Don't walk around the streets of San Francisco at night, just a tip haha. And then we drove back to the hotel. But don't be fooled. We turned down just about every wrong street ever. Haha and then the highlight of the whole day, we were all tired, lost, confused, and we made a right turn ONTO A ONE WAY STREET, THAT WAS NOT GOING THE WAY WE WERE GOING!!! The feeling was exactly like when you're having a dream and you jump off a clif and you wake up breathing super hard! And my grandma screamed and covered here eyes, and my mom yelled and I couldn't even yell, I was just in shock haha. There were headlights coming right at us, but luckily there was a little bit of a shoulder that we could hurry and pull off to. And after we all regained our breath, we made a U turn and eventually we made it back to the hotel and we went to bed hahah.