Mother's Day Weekend in San Francisco

Last week work brought me to San Francisco. I've been there many times, but it had been quite some time since I was able to be a tourist in San Francisco, so this time my mom and sister came out for a long weekend to celebrate Mother's Day. We were quite the tourists, visiting the Golden Gate Bridge, Sausalito, Chinatown, Haight Ashbury, Fisherman's Wharf, Golden Gate Park, Union Square. We also rode the cable cars, had Mother's Day brunch by the water, and did a lot of shopping.

Here it is...the most famous SF landmark, the Golden Gate Bridge. Here we learned that the color is actually what they call "International Orange." We also learned that 11 men died when they built the bridge back in the 1930s.

We rode the ferry over to Sausalito, which was one of my favorite parts of the trip. Sausalito is a beautiful little town right on the water with lots of hills and beautiful homes.

Another shot in Sausalito. This is Fisherman's Wharf shortly after the Bushman scared us to death. If you haven't been to SF, the Bushman is a guy who uses a set of branches to disguise himself as a bush and then jumps out and scares poor clueless tourists. We must have looked pretty gullible because there were actually a bunch of other tourists poised with their cameras ready to go when he scared us. We didn't disappoint them ... I think I jumped about five feet and all of us screamed.

More of the Golden Gate bridge. Across the bridge there is Sausalito.

This is what they call "Postcard Row." Apparently a lot of pictures are taken of those houses there, so we had to take some too! They call them the Painted Ladies. Nice view of the city there in the background.

This is the Japanese Tea Gardens inside the Golden Gate Park.