San Francisco Trip Part I

Well over a week after I got back from my trip to CA, I am finally getting around to writing some recaps!  There's too much to cover in one post, so I am breaking it up into 3!

My trip to California started off with a presentation and some client meetings in the LA area.  I flew in on a Tuesday night and on Wednesday I presented at the board meeting at a large bank (which was kind of intimidating), did 3 other meetings, and then flew to San Francisco.  I had one more client meeting on Thursday morning and then I was FREE!  Woo hoo!

I could not get out of this business suit fast enough.  When I was young I thought business suits were so fancy and glamorous.  Now I know they are androgynous and unflattering.

I got back into the city around lunchtime on Thursday and met up with Lauren.  After changing out of my uncomfortable business suit, we walked over to the Ferry Building for lunch. 

Our lovely view of the bay bridge while eating lunch!

The Ferry Building is so pretty!

After lunch, we did some walking around, hit up a Nordstrom Rack (where we had no luck) and then met up with Kyria as she was kind enough to host us for the night!  We went to a Korean place for dinner that night.  I had never had Korean food and it's probably not something I would have checked out on my own but I am glad we did because the food was so good!  They brought all these different pickled vegetables and such!  The amount of food on our table was borderline obnoxious, but it was fun to try a different cuisine!

On Friday morning, we got up and went back into San Francisco.  Friday morning was not my best morning.  I am usually really good at navigating new cities thanks to Google map, but Friday was not my day.  We back tracked a couple of times, while carrying/dragging out suitcases but we did end up having a delicious brunch before heading to the Mission District to check into our airbnb (I also messed up when navigating to the Mission District.  Like I said, it was not my day!).

We opted to rent an apartment off of airbnb as it was less expensive than getting a hotel room.  Plus it's nice to have access to a kitchen for longer trips like this.  Our garden apartment was adorable.  We had the bottom floor of this building. 

We got a lot of use out of the kitchen/dining room area as we made dinner there on Friday night and also had breakfast there on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

But one of my favorite places was the backyard!  It's shared by the 3 units in that building but no one was out there during the weekend.  We enjoyed some appetizers out here on Friday night.

Anyways, back to Friday afternoon... After Lauren and I dropped our bags and rested our legs for a bit we headed over to Dolores Park which was just a couple of blocks away - down a STEEP hill, I might add.  We definitely got a workout in walking around our neighborhood.

The weather was picture perfect!

Our neighborhood was so charming but oh my goodness, the hills. This picture doesn't really do it justice so trust me when I say that all of the walks were heart-pumping.

Amber and Leigh arrived mid-afternoon and after they settled in for a bit, we went for a walk in our neighborhood. I thought the Mission District was so neat and had a lot of character.

How amazing is this mural?

After grocery shopping at a place that was described by our airbnb host as "the place hipsters buy their food" (which was totally true) we headed back to the apartment to whip up an easy pasta dinner (GF for me, of course) and a salad.  I had eaten out the last couple of days so it was great to enjoy a home-cooked meal.

We were in bed fairly early on Friday night as we had our big race on Saturday, which I'll tell you all about in my next post!

Have you been to San Francisco?  If so, what area of the city did you stay in?  I loved staying in the Mission District as there were a lot of restaurants close to our apartment and the neighborhood was quiet/felt safe.