San Francisco Trip: Days 1 and 2

It's become clear that recovering from our California trip is taking just about as long as our trip lasted...that's not good! I thought it would be fun to do a recap of our trip and after working on it decided that I had too much to say about the trip for one post, so I broke it down into two. In this post I'll talk about our first two days in the city, then will post about our last two days there in the next one.

Day 1: The first few nights we stayed with my cousin who lives in the Noe Valley neighborhood, which may quickly be becoming my favorite area. Within a few blocks of her house is 24th Street which has plenty of adorable boutiques and coffee shops. While my husband headed out for a run that first morning, I decided to head out for a walk and enjoy the scenery. My workout ended up including jogging up a block of stairs and my reward was not being able to walk without noticeably sore legs until Sunday. Go figure. Afternoon plans involved a Giants game, but not before catching a drink at my favorite place - 21st Amendment. Their watermelon wheat is my favorite beer and they always have some other great local brew that my husband enjoys.

Day 2: On Thursday I started out the day playing with my cousins' adorable little foster kittens. They were so cute and it was hard to not bring one back with us! We headed out that day to go shopping.  My cousin and I just kept dropping my husband off at a bar before we moved on to the next store.  We started out downtown, wandered through a few department stores, but sadly didn't make it into the largest Old Navy store I've ever been in (The women's section is probably bigger than most stores I've seen!). For the best though - this was definitely a trip on a budget and what fun is it to go in your favorite store if you can't really let yourself buy anything. One of the things I love about shopping downtown is that there are so many street vendors with handmade, inexpensive jewelry, but I didn't manage to find anything I couldn't live without.

After wandering around downtown, we headed to the Mission District to check out some boutiques, of course none of which I remember the name of! I did find some cute rings for only $6 at a store that sold designer samples. (see them here). This is definitely a neighborhood that one of these trips I will spend an afternoon thrifting in...I'm determined! This trip just wasn't the trip for it unfortunately. There's a Buffalo Exchange in that neighborhood, which is where the blouse from this post (and plenty others!) came from last year, so when I have a shopping budget on the next trip that store will definitely be visited as well. After shopping all afternoon we headed to my cousins' oldest sons' soccer game. After the game we all headed to dinner back in Noe Valley, with Kyle and I grabbing a beer at a local bar together before calling it a night.

A little side story about those gray shoes - I wanted a pair of gray Converse because you know, I wanted to be all Scarlet and Gray for the game. My budget couldn't justify them, but these mens sneakers from Walmart for $12 are proving themselves to be a great second best. They were worth it just because I lived in them on our trip, but I'm sure they'll get plenty of use now that we're back home too!

That's it for days 1 and 2 - come back soon (probably Thursday or Friday) to hear about days 3 and 4!