San Francisco Day #1

Neil and 3 other husbands planned a totally awesome trip for us girls.  We received the cutest photo-shopped picture for Christmas of all of us in San Francisco.  How bout that for the most thoughtful Christmas gift ever?  A girls trip to San Francisco!  The husbands planned so much and worked so hard on this for us.  We had a great time and are so appreciative!  The only thing I would have wanted in addition to the trip was if Neil could have been there with me.  We stayed with Aunt E. and the accommodations were so fancy.

We left bright and early on Wednesday morning.  We left our houses at 4 am to get to SF.

Shreveport Airport 4 am.

We arrived in SF at 10, met up with Casey, and headed to Aunt E's house.  We got settled, got ready, and called Lyft.  Lyft is the fantastic car service that uses Smartphone app and no cash.  The cars and drivers are cleaner and nicer than taxis and it's cheaper!  It was an easy way to get around SF and only $22 per person the entire time!  The app determines where you are and within a couple minutes a car with a big pink mustache showed up!  A few of the drivers even gave us snacks, gum, and bottled water.  Here is one of them:

 So the first one picked us up and took us to the Mission District.  Before we got there we had him pull over at the Painted Ladies.  All of us grew up watching Full House so we had to see them.  GGB has been loving it as well so Erinn made sure to get a pic for her!

Painted Ladies

Painted ladies with the Southern Ladies!

We got to the mission district a few hours before our culinary tour so we stopped for appetizers and wine.

 I am total believer in culinary tours now.  You get so much history and food for your time and money.  It's been a great deal in Dallas, Charleston, and now San Fran.  We will do one in NYC next month!

Casey, Erinn, and me

 The mission district was a bit dodgy.  We were a little nervous about the area and went in so many places we normally wouldn't have.  I am so glad we did it though!

this guy holding the raw meat supposedly invented the "carne asada."

This mural supposedly represents the cycle of corn.

One of the things we sampled...cactus and beans stuffed tortilla

Leigh, Chris Milano (our tour guide), and the comal pan.  At least one person from every group on the tour won a door prize except ours!  ha!  Our tour guide has a wide array of accents from Latino to San Franciscan to Italian to Southern.  He was from SF and appeared in Recipe Showdown on Food Network.

King's Bakery home of the FANTASTIC coconut bun.  It was rated 1 of the top 100 things to eat before you die in San Francisco.

I was loving this poster that said "Henry Lewis!"