San Francisco

Brad had a conference in San Francisco for work last week so I went with him to hang out for a few days.   Several of the people he works with went too and it was nice to meet/spend some time with them.

Our view from Houston to SF

Since I was without my camera lens, I decided I needed to rent one for the trip.  I initially made a mistake on the rental dates but when I called to cancel, they told me they had a location about 3-4 blocks from our hotel in SF and I could just pick it up!  I couldn't believe my luck!  As soon as we arrived in SF, we dropped our luggage in our room and then walked the few blocks to pick up the lens.  We learned quickly that the blocks in SF are longer than the blocks at home.  We also learned that we didn't want to walk back to return the lens because the area seemed questionable to me.  

I rented a Canon 18-200 and was very happy with it.  If I didn't already have an 18-135 I would consider buying the 18-200.  I didn't even use the 70-300 that Bedford loaned me.  It would have probably been nice for certain situations, but I didn't want to carry extra lenses with me everywhere.

One of the guys Brad works with found The Mosser hotel (the red brick building in the middle) and we all ended up staying there.  It was unlike any hotel I've ever stayed in.  But we were lucky to get the room we got...it had a bathroom in it and the sink was in the bathroom.  I know that doesn't sound like much but one couple (Zac and Charell) had to use a community bathroom down the hall from their room and another couple (Richard and Beverly) had a room with the sink out in their room instead of in the bathroom.  

There was no air conditioner which is probably fine most of the time but it was warm while we were there so the window that opened up to 4th street was the only way to cool the room.  4th street was busy 24/7 so that was a small problem.  

 This window in the shower was odd...can you tell that there is another window about 8 inches away from ours that is in the shower of the room next to us?  Weird.

This was the miniature sink that was in our bathroom.  It was so small that we all laughed about dripping toothpaste on the floor because we couldn't get above the sink.  There was a mirror that stuck out over it just to make it all more difficult!  I took this photo with my phone and I don't think it really does it justice.  HA!  

But the hotel had charm and interesting architectural details and I really ended up liking it.  We didn't spend much time in the room anyway.

The first night we just met up with some of the others for dinner at John's Grill.

After that we went to 4th Street Bar and Grill.  Brad spotted it on our way to pick up the lens.  It was just at the end of our block and we ended up eating there three or four times during our stay.  We were there on Saturday and Sunday so we had to have somewhere to watch football.

I'm going to break up our activities each day into separate blog posts so that this one isn't too long.....