San Fransisco birthday adventures

Ghirardelli Square

On Thursday after we took our first trip across the Golden Gate Bridge we stopped at Ghirardelli Square for some shopping and of course...chocolate! Since we ate such a late breakfast that day, we decided to skip lunch and just have hot fudge ice cream sundaes. They were amazing! I'm not a really big hot fudge fan, I like to just have plain ice cream, but I couldn't eat at Ghirardelli's without having the chocolate. Chocolate is not actually made here in San Fransisco any more, but they do have a little section in the restaurant where they show how the chocolate was once made.Outside the restaurant is a really cute little shopping area. They have lots of other restaurants and boutiques to walk through. The fun part about traveling at Christmas time is seeing huge beautifully decorated Christmas trees every where.

Fisherman's Wharf

One of the things I knew we had to do on our vacation was to visit the wharf. It was the first thing I thought about when picking San Fran. We really lucked out on our hotel location because we were so close to wharf and could walk there easily. Actually...we could walk to a lot of places from our hotel and it was great...not to mention all the exercise we got that weekend. ANYWAY...Fisherman's Wharf had so many things to do and see. One of the attractions is Pier 39. Its full of restaurants, shops, and sea lions!! The sea lions showed up at the pier 20 years ago and haven't left since.

For dinner on Thursday night we ate at a really cute Italian restaurant. We had looked up a couple Italian restaurants, but when we got there they told us there would be about an hour long wait for both places. Instead a man stopped us outside his own restaurant and convinced us to come in and eat. It was such a fun little family owned and operated restaurant. They gave us complimentary appetizers, glasses of wine, and some little Italian dessert cookies. The cookies where actually kind gross, but everything else was delicious!