San Francisco

The following is our trip to San Francisco. I've included some pictures below, but will only post a few and the rest will be in our Picasa site (Click "Our pictures" link below to see all the pictures).

Tuesday (9/18) we flew out to San Francisco and drove to Santa Rosa for our balloon ride on Wednesday.

Wednesday we got up and drove to meet the hot air balloon group. There were 4 balloons that went up and 10 people in our balloon. We took a lot of pictures that you can see in the Picasa link below on the right. The balloon ride was a blast and we were in the air about an hour. We took off from one of the vineyards and flew south. We got up to about 3400 ft. and at one point were traveling close to 40 miles an hour. They said it was very fast for a balloon and it was because there was a storm coming in. It didn't feel like we were going that fast at all. Once we started coming down the balloon slowed down and the landing was very soft. We helped pack all the equipment and then went to a brunch that the balloon company prepared.

We then headed back to San Francisco and stopped at the Golden Gate Bridge. We walked across the entire bridge both ways and later that night learned that there were wind gusts up to 47 miles per hour while we were walking the bridge.

After we walked the bridge, we got something to eat and returned the car and took the shuttle to the hotel.

Thursday we took the Caltrain to San Francisco and took a bus to China town. We shopped in China town all morning. We saw the Transamerica Pyramid which was on my list because AEGON owns the building and it’s one of the most photographed buildings in San Francisco.
Friday we took the boat to Alcatraz and did the tour. It was neat to see and hear all the stories that they have on the audio tour and the guided tours. The picture below is of 3 cells. Only the middle cell had the furniture in it.
This is a picture of me in a solitary confinement cell.
We spent all the other time seeing the normal tourist sights like the “Crooked” road, the sea lions, Fisherman’s wharf, and Pier 39.

This is a picture of a section of Lombard Street, the "crooked" road.

We were watch this family do this trampoline set-up and the two Grandfathers in their 50's were drunk and did it. We were laughing so hard that when the one grandfather got done he said he was paying for me to do it. So I did. I managed a few double back flips and a few forward flips. I tried for a triple back several times and couldn't pull it off.