Finally!!!!!

Okay, blogger is being difficult and not letting me post my pictures. Here are some from our trip and hopefully, while my precious children are napping tomorrow, I will get to upload the rest.

This is the end of our trip. I always load pictures from the end to the beginning because it saves on editing time. I guess it backfired this time. Oh, well, here is the end...at the beginning...

On Monday we did several things (more to come on that later) and the last touristy thing we did was visit the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park.

I was actually excited about going to the park but had no idea how spread out it was. It is crazy big. And getting there was a whole other story. Everywhere around the park, if you are driving, you can't turn left. Guess which direction we needed to turn to get into the park. Yep, left. To make matters worse, my bladder was near capacity and I was frantic. After encouraging Matthew to make many illegal turns to find a bathroom, he, being the rule follower he is, found a legal turn to get us to the park and me to a bathroom. And here is the tea garden:

We put the camera on timer to get this baby. Elyn is so excited that it worked!

Oops, I was wrong about the tea garden being out last touristy thing. We did go searching for Janis Joplin's house and the "Painted Ladies".

I'm happy to report our hunt was successful.

Janis Joplin's house. She only lived there in 1967 so I am sure she didn't feel truly connected to the dwelling.

The "Painted Ladies" or "Postcard Row". One of the travel books I looked at said this is the most photographed spot in San Fran. I have a hard time accepting that as truth. What about the Golden Gate Bridge, or Alcatraz, or the trolleys? And also, I was the only person taking a picture of these homes while we were there. Matthew couldn't believe we had to stop and take a picture...he wasn't that impressed with them. Not a lover of "Full House", I guess.

Our last day, Tuesday, was just a half day for us. We had to leave for the airport by 12:30 but knew we could do something before we had to pack up and leave. So Tuesday became "trolley day"! Up until this point, we had not ridden a trolley at all. Our main mode of transportation had been our legs (except for the day we rented the car, but you'll have to wait on that because it's before all of these pictures).

I mean, you can't go to San Francisco and NOT ride a trolley, especially if you have no idea if you will ever get back there.

To show you what an awesome photographer I am, I included this picture.

While I was taking this picture (awesome lighting!) the trolley conductor was telling me to sit down or get out of the doorway. I don't think he appreciated my asking him to smile.

Sweet Elyn on the way back to our hotel after an awesome (side note: I just re-read and saw that I used the word "awesome" entirely too many times during this post. I'm going to find a thesaurus) breakfast of sourdough bread and crab chowder. Gross! Actually after we ate our "real" breakfast food at Boudin's Bakery we were walking back to the trolley and passed a street vendor selling chowder. Matthew had to stop and get a cup. I couldn't stomach the fishy soup at such an early hour.

For all of you faithful readers (all 5 of you), I apologize for my tardiness in posting my pictures. I have just been sitting around, doing my nails, working on my tan, and sipping freshly squeezed lemonade. Yeah, right.


More to come tomorrow. Please be cooperative blogger!