If you didn’t catch us in San Francisco last week through our stories, then this is the post for you! Today we are going to give you our guide to a weekend in San Francisco! City guides are my absolute favorite because they give me an excuse to explore a new place and find some hidden gems for all of you. If you saw any of our content from a few weeks ago, then you know we spent our time in San Fran eating all the best food, visiting the coolest landmarks, and catching our favorite bands!
The memories were amazing, and as some of you may already know, we love to keep physical versions of them. Luckily, right before we left for San Francisco we discovered the HP Sprocket Plus, which lets you edit and print out photos from your phone! So, of course, we decided to print out some of our favorite memories and bring them home as physical copies and put into a little San Francisco photo album. Not only are the Sprockets easy to use, the quality of the print is great! They are ink-less printers, that are easy to fit in your bag for a vacation; the new Sprocket Plus prints are also bigger than the original Sprocket’s. AND they are also stickers!
When we were looking at places to stay before we left, we noticed that a lot of the Airbnb’s in San Francisco are priced pretty closely to the hotels. There are a lot of cool places to stay in San Francisco and the surrounding areas, that put you right in the local action!
When we visited San Francisco for the first time, if you can call 12 hours total (including sleeping!) a visit, we stayed at the Proper! It’s located right in the middle of Market District, with lots of shops and eateries! We didn’t get to experience it too much, but it was super nice.
A ton of you recommended Media Noche as a great place to eat, so the first thing we did when we got to San Francisco was head straight to this delicious Cuban eatery in the Mission District. You all did not let us down, it was absolutely amazing, and it’s right in the center of the Mission district, which means murals and shops everywhere! It was so tasty we even ordered it again on Postmates and had it delivered right to our hotel!
When we were planning our trip to San Francisco, I told Kyle I wanted to eat at at least one fancy restaurant for dinner! He delivered with Spruce, which is a Michelin starred restaurant in Presidio Heights, and it was exceptional! We ate like royalty, with steak and duck, as well as a bunch of dessert samples. Needless to say, I had a food baby afterwards!
Everyone recommended Bi-Rite as THE ice cream shop to check out, and so, after we ate at Media Noche, we wandered until we wound up here. It was so tasty! Kyle got a popsicle, that he ate in one bite, and I got the S’mores cone, which was like a camping trip for my tongue! It was the perfect way to cool off after all the walking.
If you didn’t know, we started everyday at Outside Lands with these great donuts! The best part about them was that they were my favorite type of donut, cake donuts, and they even had one that was wheat free for Kyle to eat. We loved them so much we even made a Sprocket print of them to drool over on weekend mornings!
Pica Pica had a stall at Outside Lands that we stopped at for lunch one day, it was super yummy! It also was 100% gluten free which was great for Kyle. We heard it was featured on Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, too, which means you have to check it out, right? Flavortown! Ha!
Another one of the stalls at Outside Land was this ice cream shop, that many of you recommended to us as well. I tried the Secret Breakfast sundae, and it was phenomenal! It’s a bourbon ice cream topped with cornflakes. I also snapped a quick pic of this and printed it out on the Sprocket before I devoured it! Maybe I can recreate it with the photo!
Do you guys remember choco tacos?!? I used to eat them all of the time when I was younger! They’re hard shell tacos, stuffed with ice cream and then dipped in chocolate and covered with a topping. Basically the perfect marriage of my love of tacos and ice cream!
We didn’t get to visit Tartine Bakery while we were in SF but it was one of the places everyone recommended. We did pass by it on our first day, but the line was out the door! They sell all kinds of baked good that are to die for like fun cookies or tarts.
Another place we weren’t able to visit, Slanted Door is a modern Vietnamese restaurant down by the water, with a menu that makes my mouth water! A few of you recommended it and we will definitely be hitting it up next time we are in town.
We had to make sure to grab a baked good from this local hotspot, otherwise how would you know we were in San Fran? Mr. Holmes Bakehouse is the place that invented the cruffin, and it was awesome! Not only do they have great donuts, cookies, and other baked treats, they have an awesome neon sign! The only thing that compares is the sister shop, Supermoon, here in NYC!
Since we were in the Mission district for food on our first day, we decided to tour the local murals, which San Fran has a ton of! Clarion Alley is one of these, with the walls on both sides of the alley being painted and constantly changing!
Another alley with tons of murals, Balmy Alley, also happens to be in the Mission district, which is one more reason to visit, and maybe grab some Media Noche!
Everyone should recognize these houses! They are the famous Painted ladies that were featured in the Full House opening credits! Painted ladies actually refers to any type of Victorian style home with pastel coloring, but these are by far the most famous example! We spent a lot of time here trying to get the perfect photo with houses and one of our Sprocket prints!
Soo many of you recommended the Musée Mécanique, and we knew we had to go when we realized it was an old school arcade, like the one I grew up with in Michigan, Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum! They have all types of old coin operated games, and if you’re like Kyle, they have a ton of collectible penny machines! I think he spent more on pressed pennies than he did on games!
Golden Gate Park is a huge park on the western edge of the city, that is actually even bigger than Central Park! It’s so big that one end can be sunny and warm and the other foggy and cold, crazy right? It has a ton of things to do, like botanical gardens, wooded areas, and even windmills! It’s also where Outside Lands is hosted, that’s right, it’s inside the park, that’s how big it is!
Of course, when we first planned the trip the only thing that mattered to me was where I could play pinball, and San Francisco did not disappoint! It has a ton of places to play pinball, but Free Gold Watch takes the cake! It had over 50 machines and so many of my favorites like Creature from the Black Lagoon, Twilight Zone, and Addams Family. We could have probably spent the whole trip here to be honest!
All over San Francisco you can find crazy painted houses similar to the Painted Ladies! We came across so many pink, peach, and blue houses that I considered moving there just for the colors alone! If you look hard enough you can even find rainbow houses scattered around. The only downside is that they aren’t all in one row or on one street, so be prepared to really take an adventure!
Fisherman’s Wharf is a historical part of San Francisco’s waterfront, that has some seafood eateries that have been around FOREVER! The Musée Mécanique is here, as well as a tour-able submarine and lots of little shops!
There you have it! Our weekend guide to San Francisco, ice cream and all! Can you tell we had a blast on this trip? The best part of it is that we get to have these awesome physical mementos, thanks to our trusty Sprocket, to look at whenever we want to be transported back, Karl The Fog and all! Plus, we could totally make a map of our visit and use the photos as stickers on it! What’s your favorite part about San Francisco, besides the great food? Where should we head for our next trip? I’ve heard Charleston is nice this time of year!
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One Response
OMG where is your pink leather jacket from?! I love it!