The Many Adventures of the Bay Area: Part I

Last weekend Katy and I rented a car (a little Kia, GREAT gas mileage) from the Oakland airport and headed off for adventures and to explore the Bay Area. Just to be clear, The Bay Area refers to the entire area around the bay, it’s more than just San Francisco. (To be in on this really funny joke, please see below Julie Goldman’s funny sketch about The Bay Area – it’s spot on.)

Click Here for Julie Goldman's hilarity.

Day 1: Highway 1

First we decided, let’s just drive down the infamous Highway 1 for some lovely sights of coastal California!

With no map and no clear understanding of the directions and locations of many of the places to which we wanted to go, we headed out and made our great mistake: taking the “scenic route” with the Bay Bridge, the Embarcadero, and Golden Gate Park during Chinese New Year celebrations and the Tulip Festival (and apparently, some kind of marching band competition? I have no idea…).

Ah, typical San Francisco overcast and fog. We were headed over the Bay Bridge.

This is Mateo's favorite part of the Embarcadero: The Fire Truck!

Old part of the Bay Bridge that connects Treasure Island and San Francisco. I get to go over this every day for the commute. The other half, Treasure Island to Oakland, is all brand new. Those pictures can be seen later. :)

A sail boat in the bay!

Did we get to see any of the fun festivities of the Chinese New Year? Nope. Did we see any tulips? Nope. Did we deal with tourist traffics? Yep. Ok ok, we were also acting as tourists, but the Embarcadero is where we WORK. Lame! Driving through the different docks was an awful idea too. Why did we want to keep along the coast line?? What were we thinking?? Oh well, it was gorgeous day and we kept the windows down.

This is what people talk about when they refer to "foggy San Francisco."

Golden Gate Bridge.

I really liked this weird building. Neither of us know what it is, exactly. Someone told us once, but we can't remember.

After getting lost for a bit in Golden Gate Park and having a chilling almost-going-over-the-Golden-Gate-Bridge-when-we-want-to-stay-on-this-side experience, we finally found our way to Highway 1!

MOAR FOG!

Highway 1! Oh yea!

Gorgeous sea views.

West Coast trees!

Mountains.

Cliffs and beaches.

Yup, this is California.

Pretty chill.

Pretty awesome.

Random boat?

Finally! We were on our way to Half Moon Bay! Hey hey, we even got to play on the beach! The waves were pretty scary, and somehow the Pacific Ocean seems SO MASSIVE even though the visibility is the same or less than looking out at the horizon of the Atlantic Ocean.

We didn't stay for long, though. It was starting to get dark and we were hungry, so went to a taqueria.

Half Moon Bay.

It was a fun drive, as you can see. The way back in the dark was also very nice!

I thought Denise would love this. We love the Coca-Cola sign.

Traffic on the Bay Bridge. Ugh.

San Francisco at night.

The new half of the Bay Bridge. I think she's beautiful!

Massive!

I'll post about the remainder of the weekend in other posts, but I at least wanted to update once. I love living here: so much to do in one area.