San Francisco Touring, Part 3

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Okay, we’re FINALLY nearing the end of our Northern California trip report with Day 3 of our San Francisco Vacation Itinerary. Which, thank goodness, because it’s not like that trip wasn’t nearly two years ago or anything. Ahem.

So, we’ve already covered our Volkswagen van tour of the city, as well as our trip to Alcatraz and going to Muir Woods.

So, let’s finish!

Palace of Fine Arts

Our van tour on our first full day in San Francisco just had a very brief photo stop at the Palace of Fine Arts. But Ken and I definitely wanted to go back to walk around the area.

The Palace of Fine Arts was built for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exhibition. The exhibition celebrated San Francisco’s recovery from the deadly 1906 earthquake and fire, as well as the completion of the Panama Canal. It fell into disrepair in the 1960s and was largely demolished and rebuilt.

These days, it’s mostly used as an event venue.

San Francisco Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park

Next up, we took an Uber from the Palace of Fine Arts to the Botanical Garden inside Golden Gate Park. If you’re a frequent visitor of this blog, you know that we’re complete suckers for Botanical Gardens. (Like our visits to them in Atlanta, DC, Santa Cruz, Las Vegas, Key West, Philadelphia, and Dallas.)

Like many other botanical gardens and arboretums that we’ve visited, this one also had separate “rooms” for different types of climates. The desert room was hot and dry, and had many types of desert vegetation on display.

And then, there was the highland tropics room. Hot and humid!

And lots of other miscellaneous rooms (meaning, I didn’t take note of their names).

Haight Ashbury

After the Botanical Garden, it was time for lunch (more on where we ate in a future post!) and then we walked around the Haight Ashbury neighborhood.

Haight Ashbury is, well, named for being at the intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets. It became well known as the center of hippie life in the 1960s. Janis Joplin, and the members of both Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead all lived in this neighborhood.

Miscellaneous San Francisco

And then there were the spots we saw that didn’t quite fit into any particular category.

Like this practically free bike rental place:

And the “seismic” button in our hotel elevator. What does that do?

And, of course, San Francisco’s famed cable cars:

And that was it for our time in San Francisco! Well, of course, there was also the primary reason that we went to that area! To attend the wedding of one of Ken’s college friends in Oakland.

The entire area is so stunning and the weather was just so perfect. Even in early July, it was never overly hot.

Have you been to San Francisco? What were some of your favorite spots?