Exploring days: Spring Break

Spring Break

We FINALLY had a week spring break, which was very much needed.

All of us were super excited, because we drove down to San Francisco!

We left Saturday morning, and drove to Vacaville to spend the night at a motel, and the next morning, we went to go see the Muir Woods. They were a part of the redwoods, and they were huge. It was super cool to hike around and see these tall, but skinny trees.

After that, we only had a one hour drive to the city, and then, finally...

I saw the Golden Gate bridge. It was raining, but I still got out of the car, and walked around the viewpoints. After I was done taking like a million pictures, we made our way through San Francisco downtown- traffic, and after another hour, we got to our apartment in the Mission District.

The apartment was really nice, It wasn't in the heart of the city, but we could easily walk to a subway- station, to go places.

We unpacked the car and after settling down a little, we walked down the street to explore our neighbourhood and get dinner.

The next day, we had to get up relatively early, because we booked an Alcatraz- tour.

We took the subway, and walked down to the piers. It was a grey day and a little wet, but seeing palm trees and the ocean I forgot that.

We took the fairy out to the island, and walked around with an audio- guide in our ears. It was really interesting, even though it wasn't very nice to hear some of the stories about the prisoners.

We came back to the mainland and walked to the 'little Italy' - district. It was nice, and after we had dinner in a really nice reastaurant with really good pasta, I kinda missed Italy.

On Tuesday, we walked around the Mission- district and saw some murals. Murals are paintings on fences and housewalls, and all of them tell a story. We were lucky and met a class there, so we kind of slipped into their tour and learned more about the murals.

After that, we went to 'Tartines' , which is a french bakery and we had lunch. It was so, so delicious!

Even though I spoke english, and was surrounded by english- speaking people, the moment we left the bakery, I expected to be in France, because the food tasted, like it just HAD to be from a French bakery. ( 'Tartine' is a French bakery, but it's hard to believe that there is such good French pastries outside of France)

We took the subway to Chinatown and just walkwd around which was really nice. Old people were playing cards in the park and people were walking around, busy getting their groceries, and sometimes you could hear some sort of melody jingle from the side- alleys.

We had a really nice Chinese- dinner at the end of the day and then we walked back to our apartment.

On Wednesday, we just went to eplore the whole city a little more. We went to the Golden Gate Park, and saw the botanical garden and the Chinese tea- garden. Ruby and I really wanted to see tiled steps, and fortunately they were really close, so we spent a lot of time, walking them up and down.

We went to go to some small boutiques and bookstores and the weather was finally really nice. It was warm and sunny and just like how I always imagined Californian weather.

We had dinner in a really, really good pizza- restaurants, which was just so delicious.

On Thursday, we drove to the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge and walked around the Marin Headlands. It was really cool. Ruby and I walked the Bridge (which is about 4 miles round trip) and after our legs were sore when we left. We had lunch at In n' Out, which kind of is the ultimate Californian expererience, and it was good.

We drove to see some more redwoods, and then we checked in at a hotel.

On Friday, we drove the Oregon coast back up to Corvallis.

The whole trip was amazing, and I really appreciatee it. San Francisco has been on my bucket list for years, and now I finally saw it and I totally fell in love. It is such a beautiful city, which so much character, and even though the streets were really steep, I could just walk around all day.

I hope all of you had a happy Easter feast!!

Love, Malin

It was a pain to decide between all the pictures, but I don't want to bore you all, so I just took one from the big parts there...