Planes, Trains, and Automobiles... and feet.: I left my heart in San Francisco

Haha... not really, my heart is still on the East Coast, but there isn't a song title "San Francisco was great to visit"

We headed down California and made a couple stops along the way. First stop was in beautiful Napa Valley, home to over 400 wineries. We couldn't stop at all of them or even multiples, so I picked one that I thought would be cool to see. Castello di Amorosa looks like a medieval castle and was built using the same type of construction methods that were used in the middle ages. The castle had tons of different passageways and things that you could wander around in for hours if you wanted to. I also did a tasting and their wine was good too. After leaving the winery, we headed to Petaluma, CA home of the Lagunitas Brewing company. That was a cool place too that had live music in a huge beer garden and some of the best IPA's in the country.

The next day we went to a nice church in the morning. The people there were very friendly and the message was great. Then we headed into town. We took a bus tour and had a great live guide as we saw the sights around the city. We walked around Fisherman's Wharf, near the Transamerica Pyramid Building, down to the Embarcadero, around Washington Square, and Ghiradelli Square (OH MY... that was a chocolate lover's dream! Chocolates everywhere and free samples were being given out too!).

We did the same thing the second day, but got off the bus at a few more stops. We went into their city hall which was a very nice US capitol like building on the outside. The dome is bigger than the US Capitol. There at City Hall there were people lined up to get married there. You would see people all around the main hall in wedding dresses and tuxes. Then we headed to see a particular group of Painted Ladies. Painted Ladies are houses that are Victorian or Edwardian style houses and are painted all different colors. In order for them to be classified as a "Painted Lady" they have to have at least 7 different colors on them. The particular group in San Francisco near Alamo Square are famous. The house shown at the beginning of the Full House episodes is in this group.

We walked over to Haight (pronounced like Hate) street which is a very hippie street. and then got back on the bus and headed across the Golden Gate Bridge. The bridge is huge and awesome and iconic and super windy and really cold. It was cool and we ended up crossing it 4 times in the two days on the bus. We then walked up Lombard Street which was soooooo steep. It was like climbing a mountain, and once we got to the top there was a section of the street which is called "The Crookedest Street in the World" It was a very crooked street that was all brick. It was also beautifully gardened. We went to Chinatown which was cool. There are pagodas on the corners of the buildings, lanterns hanging between the buildings and restaurants and souvenir shops all up and down the street. And we topped on the trip into the city with a ride on the California line Cable Car.