My mom wore flowers in her hair.

So here I am driving several hours up north with my final destination being San Francisco.  About an hour from our destination my mom confesses that she has never been to San Francisco!  What?!  How could we not know this?  Granted we never asked and she never just volunteered the information but we live 4 hours away.  I assumed she had already been.  She started with the kids thing late in life so I guessed she had been to San Francisco in her 20's.  We were all shocked!


The purpose of staying in San Francisco was for my mom to have a bit of a mini vacation and for my sister and I to run the 10k in the Mermaid Series.  We ended up staying at Comfort Inn By the Bay just a typical inn, nothing fancy.  We did not intend on staying in so we didn't need a posh resort to stay at.

This picture is stolen from another site.

We did luck out on the view, which was really awesome for my mom.  We got a view of the famous Golden Gate Bridge right from our window.  We were also lucky enough to have clear weather while in San Francisco.  The times I have gone it has gotten pretty foggy so from our hotel the bridge wouldn't have been visible.  The weather prognosticator had us expecting a rainy time but instead we got clear, chilly weather.  Excuse the photo quality, I still have yet to replace my good camera after I dropped it.

Rain clouds far off in the distance.  It seriously stopped raining as soon as we got to San Francisco.

The one and only night shot I got that wasn't total crap.

I think my mom had a great time on her hilly death marches we took her on.  We took her on a walk of the Golden Gate Bridge, shopping in Chinatown and Japantown.  She got to try new things to eat (more on that later) and the best part of all, she got to see me (and my sister) complete our first 10k run.  Or rather the first timed 10k as a part of an event.  I was so happy to see my mom at the finish line smiling and happy for me.

Our first day was probably the most strenuous in regards to walking.  My sister relied on Siri to navigate us to Little Italy, through Lombard Street.  While I had no problems navigating the steep terrain, I think it was a bit tougher for my mom and my smoker husband.  I am even going to go out on a limb and say that it looked like my sister was suffering on the hills and she had been training for our run!  I wish I could have gotten some better shots because the walk was so pretty.  This is exactly why I need to replace my broken camera.  These pics were all taken with a Casio Exilim which did okay for some shots but not for all. 

Horsey Parking

The hill down was really steep!

The mister coming down a steep walkway.

The pedestrian path was lush with flowers, trees and bushes.

Well I hope to fill you in on some more of my travels to San Francisco, I expect I will have all of my pictures uploaded by this time next week.  If not at least I can use it as an excuse to avoid all the crazy Black Friday shopping chaos.  I will make it a point to post a different Black Friday video until Black Friday in an attempt to help keep people sane and at home.  Instead of going out to "git dem six dollah sheets", I am ashamed of living in a place that has the Black Friday.