The rest of the weekend...

Heidi writes:

On Saturday, we headed up to Sacramento and walked around Old Sac. It is a pretty neat place - lots of fun shops and great candy stores!! That evening we went to see a movie in Stockton - "Almost Fiction" and then ate dinner at Pho Lucky's. The movie was good and dinner was delicious! It is kind of a Vietnamese style place.

Sunday was the big day in San Francisco. We left our place around 8am and headed to Muir Woods to see the giant red woods and sequoias. It was a miserable day weather wise, but we still made the most of it. I am glad that I brought extra socks and shoes along!! Here are some pictures of the day:

The pictures above and below were taken at Muir Woods around 11am. It looks dark because of the rain. You can see how big the trees are in the photo below. That is Jeff and his brother, Mike. There are a ton of trails all through the park. We also saw a few deer when we were leaving. A sad thing that I noticed is how unaware people are of their surroundings. For example, the deer were right by the trail eating and people walked right by them - it didn't even phase them that 3 deer were 10 feet away from them.

After Muir Woods, we went to the Fisherman's Wharf for some lunch - of course we ate chowder in bread bowls. One thing I am really going to miss about California is the clam chowder and sour dough bread bowls. It is one of my favorite thing to eat here!! We also went to Ghiradelli Square - one of my favorite places to go in SF!! Wonderful chocolate! We then headed over to Pier 33 to board the ferry for Alcatraz. It continued to rain and was dreary, but it was still really neat. I really enjoyed going out to Alcatraz and want to go back because I feel like I still have so much to see. We were there for a little over 2 hours and took the 4:30 ferry back to the mainland.

These two pictures are of Alcatraz. The one above was taken as we were nearing the island and the one below was taken on the tour. There are so many more pictures we have. We were able to go in some of the cells, the dining hall, and around a few other places. There were also photos of some of the inmates, information about some of the escape attempts, and were able to read about a lot of the history before it became a federal prison. I would recommend the trip to anyone!
The rain stopped when we got onto the ferry. We were able to get some amazing pictures of the sunset and of the city. Those pictures are at the end of the blog. When we got back to land we walked down to Pier 39, Fisherman's Wharf, and some other places in the area. We went for dinner at a place in Chinatown. It was so yummy - they have a really good soup there and I love tea. Below is a picture of Jeff and I at the gate to Chinatown. After we ate and walked around some, we headed to the airport to drop Mike off.

The 4 pictures below are what we saw on the way back to the city from Alcatraz. It was so gorgeous. The rain stopped, the clouds went a way, and the sun made the most brilliant colors.

Above is the SF skyline.

The next pictures are the sunset and the Golden Gate Bridge. I love these pictures!!

It was a great weekend and I hope Mike enjoyed his time out here! We will be heading to MN/WI in 2 1/2 weeks!! I have 2 big papers, 2 big presentations, and 1 oral exam left for my classes. It will be a busy couple of weeks for me, but I can get through it!!