Birthday Surprise!

Last year around J's birthday I thought it would be really fun to take him on a surprise vacation somewhere. In a very casual conversation I asked him if he could travel anywhere in America where would he want to go? He mentioned Boston or California as two places he'd never been to. I knew I wouldn't be able to pull it off on such short timing so I spent then entire 2010 year saving up money. I saved all of my babysitting money, plus little amounts of money that I pulled out of our checking account over the course of the year. I opened a "secret" bank account to have access to a debit card for booking the hotel and plane tickets with. I thought about his choices and decided that if I was going to plan this I was going to go big...so San Francisco it was!

Over the summer I talked with his supervisor and scheduled him 2 1/2 days off of work for our secret birthday vacation. The Wednesday before his birthday I pretended to get up and get ready for work like a normal day but didn't really leave. When got up I told him that he was going to work for only half a day then wouldn't be back until Monday because I was taking him out of town. I wouldn't tell him where we were going and made him wait til after lunch. While he was at work I packed our suitcase so it was ready to go when he got home.
When Josh got home we grabbed some lunch I and drove us to the airport. At this point he still had no idea where we were going. I didn't even tell him we were flying anywhere! As we were getting off at the airport exit I handed him the itinerary for our flight and he finally found out where we were going. Josh was completely surprised and was really excited. He couldn't believe that I had saved up enough money for a trip across the country. As we sat in the airport waiting on our flight to Charlotte and then to San Fran, I told him all about my planning and the "little white lies" surrounding this birthday trip. I think he was impressed! Hahaha.

It took long time to finally get to California that night. Our plane leaving Charlotte was delayed an hour so we had dinner in the airport then boarded our 5 hours and 45 minute flight to San Francisco. I thought after flying on an 8 hour flight to Paris that this ride wouldn't be too bad, but we were dying to get off that plane by the time it landed. (Apparently plane rides with movies help to pass the time much faster than plane rides without movies!) After we picked up our luggage we took the Super Shuttle to our hotel. **Advise to anyone planning on taking a Super Shuttle from the airport to their hotel...stay away!! The Super Shuttle is a 15 passenger van that sits and waits for the van to fill up before it departs the airport and then drops everyone off at their destinations starting with the person closest to the airport. We were the last stop and rode in that van for about an hour before we made it to our hotel! We finally got situated in our room around 1:30 am...which is 3:30 am on the east coast!

Japanese Tea Garden

Thursday morning we slept in late then ate breakfast at a little cafe down the street from our hotel. After breakfast we started down toward the wharf and met a guy selling tickets for a double-decker tour bus. For $70 we could get a two day pass for the hop-on hop-off bus, but since it was already after noon, he gave us a three day pass for the same price. The bus was really neat because it gave an audio tour of everything we passed. We boarded the bus and decided to make our first stop at the Japanese Tea Garden in the Golden Gate Park.

Golden Gate Bridge

After the Tea Garden we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time. I mention that it was the first time because we ended up crossing the bridge six times! The way the bus route works is a giant circle around the city that takes an hour and a half to travel from start to finish without getting off. So if you get on at any point in the city you end up having to cross the bridge to get back to where our hotel was. So far we had been riding inside the bus, but when we crossed the bridge we moved to the top. Riding on the top of the double-decker bus is a lot of fun and you get great pictures of the sights around the town...but its SUPER cold and WINDY.
One thing that really surprised me about San Fransisco is how foggy it was there. During the three days of our trip we rarely saw the sun shine. The funny thing about the recorded audio tour was when the lady would tell us to look to our left for a great view, and all we would see was fog!

Thursday was the day was had the least amount of fog so it was the only day we could get a good glimpse of San Fransisco from the other side of the bridge.


Due to the length of our trip and amount of pictures...our adventures will have to be broken down into multiple posts...stay tuned... :)