12 Hours in San Francisco

During our stay in Los Angeles me and Aimee decided that we would take a day trip to San Francisco, we gathered since we didn't know if we'd return to California anytime soon we'd best make the most of it and since seeing the Golden Gate Bridge was on both of our Bucket Lists and it's only a 55 minute flight away why not.

Our flight out of LAX was at 7am arriving in San Francisco just before 8:30am and with our departing flight at 8pm we had less than 12 hours see San Francisco and tick off our 'must see' list.
Our list was relatively short which to me hopefully meant realistic, it included;
- Golden Gate Bridge,
- Pier 39 (SEALIONS)
- Alcatraz Island (we knew that a boat across to the island was a full day adventure so we just opted to see it from afar)
- Union square
- A tram/cable car ride
- Ferry Building Market Place
- Fisherman's Whaft

After a full 55 minutes of singing Miles Away by the Maine we touched down in San Francisco. As someone with no car and the smallest budget travelling will allow we had taken some time before our trip to look in to the best travel options from SFO to downtown San Francisco. We ended up taking the free AirTrain from our terminal to the international terminal where you can catch a BART train in to the city, it's around an $8 fare one way and it's a really simple purchase from one of the machines at the station. We caught the train down to Embarcadero station which is around a 40 minute trip. From here it was only a short walk to the water and the first tick on our must see list, The Ferry Building Market Place. From here we just followed the water round, taking in the views of Alcatraz Island, passing Pier 39 where I cried over how many Sea Lions there were until we got to Fishermans Whaft, where we found a cute little beach to take pictures on. 

From here we took a walk more in to 'the city' browsed some shops and grabbed some food before hopping on a bus to San Francisco's biggest highlight, The Golden Gate Bridge. After spending some time admiring the views and mooching around the gift shop, it was reaching mid afternoon and our queue to head back to the airport was fast approaching. Our trip back towards Embarcadero included taking a ride in a San Franciscan Cable Car, meaning another item off our list was crossed off. We had about an hour left before we really had to get on a train back to SFO which was just enough time to visit Union Square and be sad that the Museum of Ice Cream wasn't open to the public yet. Although we were sad to head back to the airport (we were even sadder when we got back to LAX and had a mare of a time trying to catch a ride out of there) we were pleased that we had managed to tick everything off our 'to see' list. 

Perks of the flight home were this pretty sunset, the Virgin America safety video and listening to Kidz Bop for an hour and craughing over the lyric changed. 

Until next time San Francisco, thanks for being so nice.