"If you're Going to San Francisco..."

A Golden Gate view from The Presidio

We love San Fran!! By far a fun and intriguing city! Wendy and I have never visited there before and so we were looking forward to spending the better part of a week there including Mother's Day. Crazy drives up almost vertical streets (think Inception movie with Leonardo DiCaprio), colourful Victorian homes, parks, Alcatraz, ocean views, Golden Gate Bridge, granola eating liberals and so much more! I mean no wonder it's one of the biggest tourist spots in North America. Over the course of the 7 days we spent in the San Fran area we managed to see A LOT in my opinion which we've captured below in no particular order.
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Alcatraz

I mean nothing screams Mother's Day like take your wife to prison right? lol
We weren't sure exactly if the kids would enjoy this attraction as we thought it may either scare them OR be a bit too dark and depressing for them. Nonetheless, it was on Wendy's list so we opted to take our chances with our kids enjoying it and jump on the ferry over to Alcatraz Island and boy were we surprised. Not only did the kids love the tour, but they enjoyed listening intently to the audio tour (should we be worried?) while we ventured throughout the entire jail. There was cool stories about prison breaks and the tour walked us in and out of certain cells so we could get a feel of what it was like. Honestly, this is a great day to spend while in San Fran and it was money well spent for us. The views from the ferry and the island back to the city were beautiful and Shyla and Wendy spotted a freaking SHARK in the waters. How fitting is that? 

All along the watchtower!

The most infamous at Alcatraz...Al Capone

Apparently Native Americans reclaimed this island when the jail shutdown...weird.

Hardened criminals!

En route to Alcatraz Island

The view of San Fran from Alcatraz

Check out Lennon's face!

Solitary confinement

Golden Gate Bridge

Probably the main attraction in San Fran and it was also well worth the hype. All in all, I think we drove over the bridge and back again around 3 times and each time it felt pretty nostalgic to be actually driving over this amazing landmark. We managed to get some amazing pictures of it from both the south side in one of the parks and also on the north side up the cliffs in Sausalito area. The kids forced me to play the theme song from Full House while driving over the bridge and I'm sure we're not the first family to have done that! 

View of Golden Gate from Sausalito on the north side

The Crooked Street & San Fran's Steep Roads

We only heard of The Crooked Street through a friend and when we looked it up we were pretty intrigued! I mean who builds a crazy steep and windy street in the middle of a city like that? If you've never seen this road you MUST go here. Even better if you can actually drive down it as we did. It was hilarious how tight the turns were and the fact that people have their homes and garages on this road also. The homes on this part of the street are beautiful and its hard to imagine that people actually live here! Apparently this street used to be one of the steepest in San Fran before there were cars. Once cars were invented, they simply could not go on this road due to excessive grade. Someone had the brilliant idea of making the street a huge windy, curvy switchback road so cars could actually go down it. From there the 'Crooked Street' was born! In addition to Lombard Street we also managed to take our Dodge Ram truck on some of the steepest streets in all of San Fran. This was hilarious to do! We drove up and down Filbert Street which was a 30% grade...I thought my truck was going to bottom out LOL! Seriously though, try parking on these streets...it feels like your car is going to roll over.

Standing atop The Crooked Street

At the base of Crooked Lombard Street...how beautiful!

Golden Gate Park

We spent one entire afternoon at the Golden Gate Park located just south of the Golden Gate Bridge as there was plenty to see and do there. Our time limited us to what we could do here, so we only managed to take the kids to the awesome kids park and the huge indoor carousel. The park was so green and lush that we could've easily spent another day there as we heard there were also animals, lakes and other cool things to see and do.

The carousel in Golden Gate Park

Time for a road-dog!! Dogs all around...except Wendy LOL.

The Painted Ladies Hippie VW Bus Tour

When you don't have a lot of time in a big city like San Fran, doing a guided city tour may be a good idea. We found a highly rated one called "The Painted Ladies Tour" which is a small personally guided tour (6 - 8 people max) where they pick you up in a 1970's Volkswagon Hippie Van and drive you to numerous sites around town. Again, we weren't sure how the kids would do on an organized tour, but we didn't have a lot of time and we wanted to see and hear about as many sites as we could. Lucky for us, the kids were toast from the day prior and they managed to pass out in the VW bus for most of the tour which left Wendy and I to enjoy the tour sans kiddies which was great! Some of the cool stops we went to included Twin Peaks, The Woman's Building, Pacific Heights, Golden Gate Bridge, The Painted Ladies, Mrs. Doubtfire's house and the Palace of Fine Arts. Overall the tour was pretty good and the tour guide himself was excellent. It still amazed me how he could drive a 6 speed manual transmission in this city as some of the inclines he took us on were crazy!

Standing on top of Twin Peaks overlooking San Fran

The kids were riveted by the tour guide LOL!

What architecture! The Women's Building

Downtown Market Street getting ready for Mother's Day dinner

Nice Ride! Painted Ladies VW Bus Tour

San Fran Civic Center

Tanner House & Painted Ladies (from Full House)

No trip to San Fran can be complete without seeing the famous Victorian and Edwardian houses called "The Painted Ladies". These beautiful homes are also famous for being in the intro scene from the 90's sitcom Full House. For some reason, Shyla's favourite show is Full House and the new version Fuller House so we absolutely had to see this while we here. Around the corner from the Painted Ladies was the actual house that the Tanner family used in the show and we surprised Shyla and took her by here to see it. Unfortunately they were renovating part of the outside while we passed by but the nice Northern Irish carpenter that was there agreed to take a picture of us sitting on their steps! Nice.

The Tanner House!!

Some more amazing architecture...the Painted Ladies

The Exploratorium

Prior to heading to San Fran we didn't have plans to visit the Exploratorium, but after several recommendations from others we decided to check it out. Similar to the Ontario Science Center (back from where we're from) and ScienceWorld in Vancouver, this place was a hit with the kiddo's! I might even say we found it slightly better than the other two science places we've been. There was tons for the kids to see, play and interact with and even the little one Madden was fully entertained. If you're coming to San Fran with small kids, I would highly recommend taking them here and spending a few hours trying out all the science gadgets here. Even Wendy and I had a huge laugh playing with some of the sights. 

On Pier 15 and outside Exploratorium...this place was awesome!