One of the attractions about going to the Bay Area is that we could fly from Provo direct to Oakland in about an hour and a half. I had thought about driving, taking 10 days, and seeing things along the way, but driving 15 minutes to the airport, waiting 20 minutes to board the plane, then arriving at our destination all before we would have even been to St. George was fantastic. Flights from Provo don't go daily, so we opted to fly Thursday to Thursday, meaning we took the kids out of school a day and a half early, but also meant we had several days here at home before going to school so the kids could play with friends. Win-win.
Knowing that we would arrive in California at 4:00, I packed lots of things for us to eat en route and when we arrived. Brandt isn't always such a great flyer, especially when there is turbulence, so Kent didn't want him to eat anything until we arrived, but both kids were hungry after school and snacked through the flight. It was a fairly turbulent flight, and as we were approaching our landing, Brandt was sick. The turbulence combined with a bag of popcorn and focusing on his Kindle was too much for Brandt's stomach. Fortunately, I had planned ahead and had a couple of airsickness bags ready in the seatback pocket. He warned me he felt like he was going to throw up, so there was no real mess to clean up. We felt bad that he felt sick.
We rented a car at the airport and I had printed off directions from the airport to our hotel in San Francisco. We took a shuttle from the airport to the car rental place, and then got our car, a Chrysler 300. We loaded everything in, hopped in the car, and started off, me giving directions and Kent driving. We hadn't been in the car three minutes when Brandt said, "I feel like I'm going to throw up." We were not at a spot where we could pull over, so when we finally got to one of those, we had a mess to clean up. Fortunately, I had brought a package of wipes (handy in all sorts of circumstances), so we pulled out clean clothes for Brandt and while Kent cleaned him up, I cleaned up the car. Brandt sat in the front the rest of the way to the hotel.
It took us as long to drive from Oakland across the Bay Bridge to our hotel is San Francsico as it took us to fly from Utah to California. There was lots of traffic, the bridge meters how many cars are on it so it's slow getting on, and it was somewhat complicated navigating through the city. But we saw interesting things--the Oakland temple, Treasure Island, the bridge itself, Alcatraz from a distance, downtown San Francisco--and managed to arrive without further incident.
Brandt riding shotgun, not playing on his Kindle, so he wouldn't be sick.
Our hotel seemed very far from the wharf and most of the activities we had planned for our stay, but it was quiet, we had a view of the city around us, and it was right next to a cable car stop, so it wasn't terrible. We parked the car (which we didn't move until the morning we left San Francisco), hauled all our stuff in, and then walked down the block for dinner. We ate at Pizza Shawarma, a middle eastern restaurant that also served pizza. Strange combination. The children had pepperoni pizza which Blythe didn't really like and didn't eat (how can she not like pepperoni pizza?), Kent had lentil soup, and I had a shawarma wrap. It was a place frequented by locals. We had hoped to do some swimming after dinner, but it turned out the pool was outside and empty. Too bad for us. Instead, I began reading aloud a new book, Raymie Nightingale. Travel is exhausting so we went to bed early. Tomorrow we'll be ready for tourist fun!
The view from our hotel room.
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