Three of us moms managed to plan a mom's weekend out last month, we took a 4 day trip to San Francisco! It was an awesome time, we did a city tour, an evening show, and a napa wine country tour, as well as eating lots of wonderful food. It was such a nice little trip, I definitely could have stayed longer - there was so much to see there.
My favorites of the weekend were the Napa wine tour and the tour of Alcatraz. The wine tour was so relaxing and it was beautiful there (not to mention warm! San Fran was kind of chilly the weekend we were there). We toured four wineries and did the tasting at three of them. That was one happy busload of people by the time they loaded us up from the last winery. We sampled some good wine, had a wonderful lunch and just enjoyed a beautiful day on the tour.
I also really enjoyed the Alcatraz tour, but I kind of enjoy all those history channel shows too... It really is beautiful out on Alcatraz island, I'm sure it wasn't if you were in innmate, but you can't beat the views of San Francisco. It was interesting to hear all about life on 'the rock' and some of the people that were incarcerated there. The thing I noticed is that it was so cold and windy there, I'm sure it was a miserable place to be a prisoner. You'd probably be cold all the time living there.
Other fun stuff: the food was fabulous in the ferry building - lots of good restaurants and bakeries. We had the best garlic crab meal in San Fran one evening. Golden Gate park looked really cool, if I had more time to explore, this is definitely one place I'd go back to see. And lastly I think it is actually more expensive to live in San Francisco than in Hawaii. Real estate there is even expensive by Hawaii standards!
Here's a photo recap:
(Clockwise from upper left) Golden Gate Bridge, Mina in Lori's Diner, cable car, ferry building, yummy cupcakes in ferry building, seagull at the bay, chinatown, Sotto Mare restaurant
Boat to alcatraz island, entrance to Alcatraz, me at Alcatraz, alcatraz, inside alcatraz cell, the painted ladies (victorian houses), Jen and Mina on the tour bus, victorian house
Trolley car, view of San Fran from Alcatraz island, wine casks on winery tour, poppy, cable car, Mina and Jen on winery tour, me with the aging wine
These and more pics also at:
https://picasaweb.google.com/amykerkemeyer/Lightroom
Just some random pics from May.
Ru and our new bunny Mr. Bun Bun (originally Mrs. Bun Bun we were told when we got him that he was a girl. Oops!). They still aren't getting along too well, the bunny tries to chase and bite the cat. Mr. Bun Bun may have to go in for a little 'attitude correction' (i.e. get him fixed).
I had my 40th birthday, the kids got me a really awesome card and of course I got a cake. So now it's another year older (and another decade!).
Adam also had his end-of-year party for school. Here he his hamming it up with some of his first grade buddies.
More pics to come of my fun, fun, fun trip to San Francisco at the end of May...
We got a Groupon deal along with our friends to go for a one night stay at a local bed and breakfast on the windward side. The place was called Paradise Bay Resort - super good deal, we rented a two bedroom unit in a house and the other family rented the one other unit in the house. The house sat right on the waterfront of Kaneohe Bay. It was beautiful and so relaxing!
What was really awesome is that the rental included a pool and also use of their kayaks and a boat ride out to the sand bar in the bay, as well as a continental breakfast. So we made the most of our 24 hour stay :)
We headed out in the kayaks into the bay, and the kids got kind of scared as land pulled away behind us, but then they seemed to settle into it. As we got out into the middle of the bay, we found a sea turtle wrapped in some fishing line, so our friends hopped out and luckily he had brought a knife and was able to cut the turtle free. Hopefully the poor thing hadn't been trapped there too long.
The boat ride the next morning was a lot of fun too, first they took us out to a nice reef in the bay and we swam and snorkeled a little while, then they took us to the sand bar area. At low tide, the sand bar is exposed, we were there close to high tide, and the water was only up around my knees in a lot of places. Adam is sitting down in the picture above. And this is out in the middle of the bay.
We had an awesome deal at Paradise Bay, if you can get a good price I would definitely recommend it. I don't know that I'd want to pay their full price rates, I thought they were too high.
So yet another fun adventure on Oahu!
