Wake Up, San Francisco! By the time you are reading this, we are on day 3 of being in the Bay Area! So far, it's been a ton of walking and sight seeing, but it's been fantastic! There is so much to see! Even though this is particularly broken down for us (since I have a couple of beauty business items to attend), we wanted to share with you how our itinerary went down!
Today's day of business:
Exploratorium
Pier 39
Fisherman's Wharf
Musee Mechanique
Ghirardelli Square
As a Side Note: Our originally plans were different, but because I had a beauty event, we had to split it differently. If you were to do the Pier 39, Fisherman's Wharf, Musee, Ghirardelli Square, we would also lump that with Alcatraz and maybe Lombard Street. Exploratorium is a bit further below, so originally we had that with Chinatown and Union Square.
Parking: We parked in the Pier 27 lot (it's open, not garaged), which is kind of in the middle of all the piers, which is nice. It's not too crowded and cost $20 for a full day (self service, put receipt on the dashboard). We parked at around 8:30 every morning and there were maybe only 15-20 cars there and although when we went to pickup the car (once at 3pm and once at 8pm) the lot was more crowded, but not full.
Traffic: We are living in the Emeryville area, so we always had to cross the Bay bridge to go into SF. When we left around 830-9 on a week day, there wasn't too much traffic, only near the toll area ($6 cash). When we left around 3pm, we got stuck in a lot of traffic in SF en route to the bridge, but the bridge itself was a bit more smooth. You do not have to pay tolls leaving SF on the Bay Bridge. When we left around 8pm, there was hardly any traffic, only a bit heading onto the bridge.
Exploratorium:
I wasn't anticipating enjoying this as much as I did. This was deemed as great for "kids" so I was expecting to fight kids in lines and what not. lmao. When we arrived at 10am (when it opened), there weren't too many people, so we ran to go see the different exhibits we wanted to see first. Many of the exhibits land all on one floor, easily labeled with signs. By the time we were ready to leave around 11:15am (you can easily spend 2-3 hours here, but Felix and I are always super quick in museums lmao), it was quite crowded in many of the areas (especially near the entrance and the tinkering exhibit). Also, summer camps were all lined up ready to head inside (it was a thursday), so I can imagine any later, it would be PACKED. My personal favorite was 3: Seeing and Listening since it was probably the most visually appealing and had more areas for me to take pictures lol.
Codmother Fish & Chips
Instead of continuing to see the sights, we figured to work our way to the top, then walk our way back down, so we bypassed Pier 39 + Fisherman's Wharf and went to go eat lunch first. This was located closest to the Fisherman's Wharf and is a little Stand shop with outdoor seating. Their Cod was delicious, fresh, and flaky. I really enjoyed eating this! Usually Fish and Chips leaves me feeling greasy and heavy, but this tasted really light and airy! Because we arrived around 11 something, there wasn't a line and there were some seats (no more shaded seats avail though), however when we left around 12:30, there was a line out the fence and people had started to share picnic benches. Also BEWARE OF BIRDS if you don't like them. They are not scared.
Fisherman's Wharf/Musee Mechanique:
Before we took another hike further along the pier, we stopped by the the Musee Mechanique. This was definitely my favorite part of Fisherman's Wharf -- probably my favorite part of the whole day. It is an old school arcade with lots of fun little trinket-y machines. Some of these were so nostalgic and some were so retro, it was so cool to play and watch little teens / kids enjoying these old school games! Plus, they were all 25-50c!
Ghirardelli Square:
Then we worked our way up to Ghirardelli Square -- treated ourselves to a little ice cream. It was a cute little shop where you order with the host before you sit. I was so regretful of mine (expresso chip) - although the chips were yum, the ice cream was just mediocre. Felix's tasted so much more yums lol!
Pier 39:
Then we made our way back down to Pier 39. If you have little kids, this is probably the best pier for them. The Aquarium is here (which we did not go to) as well as the sea lion center (which IMO was so boring because they just sat there lol). They also have a 7D experience that looked relatively popular. This pier also has a ton of shopping areas where you can get souvenirs and trinkets. They had an extremely cool, nostalgic candy shop with really overpriced sweets (but was cool to look at!) and even a lefty store -- a store of stuff for lefties! lol!
If we weren't so incredibly tired from the night before (we arrived in the middle of the night and only had about 4 hours of sleep), we would've went to eat at Sotto Mare Seafood Restaurant, but we were so exhausted, we just wanted to go back and rest since it was a decent amount of walking. We opted to pick up something to eat on our way home and eat back at the hotel. PS. the place we took food out from was Monster Pho 2 -- it was DELICIOUS! Great bang for your buck if you're looking for good value and good viet food!
Overall a great day! If I could give any advice -- get your day started early! I always forget west coast people just start everything a bit later than east coast, so when we arrived places early, there was never a rush! (ie. leaving at 8:30, dinner at 5:30, at the museum at opening etc). Just for your reference: all the walking we did was 18,519 steps (8.1 miles).
