Trip to the Bay Area: Day 1-2

Last Thursday, Todd, Lucy, and I took the early morning flight out to the San Francisco/Bay Area to visit my brother, sister-in-law, and meet our 6 week old nephew/cousin!  We were up bright and early at 3:30 AM but luckily had a direct flight to Oakland which means we arrived in California before 8:00 AM.  Lucy is anti-napping on planes (this was her 4th plane trip and the only time she's ever napped was on her first flight when she was 6 months old) but she's at such a great age to travel because she can sit still and be entertained for the 5 hour flight (thanks to lots of sticker books, iPad, and portable DVD player).  Once we arrived at the airport, we picked up our rental car and drove to Piedmont (a suburb of Oakland) where Jeff & Meghan live and where we were staying for our trip.

Day 1 (Thursday, January 21)

• Direct flight from Columbus to Oakland at 6:00 AM (!)
• Arrived in Oakland at 8:00 AM local time
• Hung out with Meghan & met our nephew, William, for the first time!
• Lunch at Rick & Ann's in Berkeley
• Hung out at Jeff & Meghan's while the babes napped
• Take out dinner from The Star
• Ice cream from Cream

Ready to board the plane

Lucy was excited!

She watched a few episodes of Daniel Tiger

And spent over an hour playing with stickers

As soon as we got her in the rental car, she was out......unfortunately, the drive to Jeff & Meghan's house from the Oakland airport was only about 20 min though

Lucy had been talking about meeting "Baby William" for weeks and was so excited to give him his new Mickey Mouse rattle

We drove to Berkeley (only about a 10-15 min drive) to have lunch at Rick & Anna's with Meghan & William (Jeff was in LA for work that day so we didn't actually see him until the next day)

Holding my sweet, sleeping nephew

Lucy "playing" with William

He's such a great baby and rarely cries so we got to see quite a few smiles and smirks from him during our trip

Lucy did not want to leave his side the entire trip.....which is good considering we're going to have a baby of our own in less than 6 months!

Holding her cousin for the first time

Can't pass up dessert while on vacation and Cream had some amazing ice cream cookie sandwiches

Brownie sundae for Meghan and cookie sandwich for me

Day 2 (Friday, January 22)

• Spinning class at Ride Oakland
• Drove into San Francisco and rode the cable cars , walked along the Embarcadero to Pier 39 to see the sea lions, and stopped for a quick snack at Boudin Bakery
• Late lunch at 21st Amendment Brewery
• Take out dinner from Lo Coco's

Even when I'm out of town I like to work out and find new studios so I was excited to try out Ride Oakland, a Spinning studio, and it was awesome!

Since we were in the Bay Area, we wanted to head into San Francisco (it was about a 30-40 min drive from Piedmont) to show Lucy some of the touristy things, and of course, it was the one day that it actually rained, but that didn't stop us from taking a ride on the cable cars 

Lucy LOVED the cable cars and thought they were like the trolley from Daniel Tiger

Someone is having a good time!

Holding on and looking out the window

The ride is only one way so once we got to the end of the line, we had to get off the cable car and wait for another to take us back to where we started; there was no line for us to get on the initial cable car but we had to wait about 20 min for one to take us back

Cable car pulling into the turnaround to go back the other way

Turning around

We had an outside seat on the way back

Driving past Lombard Street, the famous crooked street

Heading down the hills of San Francisco and back to the Embarcadero

Todd & Lucy in front of one of the cable cars after our ride

After the cable car ride, we walked down the Embarcadero to Pier 39 to see the sea lions

Lots of sea lions hanging out

It started to rain harder on our walk back so Lucy & I ducked into Boudin Bakery for a quick snack of authentic sourdough bread while Todd went and got the car

We stopped at 21st Amendment Brewery for a late lunch before heading back to Piedmont

Todd enjoying a taster tray

We thought we'd miss the rush hour traffic out of the city but apparently there's always traffic so it took us twice as long to get back to Jeff & Meghan's (it took us almost 45 min just to go a few blocks to get onto the Bay Bridge back over to Oakland).  It was a little stressful too as we were sitting in 3 lanes of traffic just about to get on the bridge when Lucy announced that she had to go to the bathroom and there was no where for us to stop or pull over.  I don't know how she did it but she held it for another 30 min and made it back to the house accident-free!

Once Jeff came home from work that evening, we ordered some takeout from an Italian restaurant and relaxed at their house for the rest of the evening.

Part 2 will be up tomorrow!