- Rent car seats instead of bringing your own. Lots to carry at the airport.
- My boys are good at flying on planes. Zach slept the entire time, both ways.
- Marriotts have very comfortable mattresses.
- There is a train that goes under the bay between Oakland and San Francisco. Its name is BART. Using the automatic ticketing machines for BART involves lots of steps and can be a little complex for the first-time user. All I want is a ticket to ride the train. How tough can that be? A lot more difficult than you would think. Anyway, Ryan liked to ride on BART. He also got to ride on a plane, a bus, a boat, and in a rental car. Lots of vehicles on this trip.
- Because we only had 1 day in the city, it was nice to take a bus tour and see it all. If we would have had more time, I think we would have taken the hop-on-hop-off tour so we would be able to get out and do more. Ryan's favorite stop: The Golden Fence Bridge. He is very fascinated with bridges and always asks now if we can take our car on the Golden Fence Bridge.
- There is still a lot of "segregation" in San Fran, as it is divided into lots of districts, and lots of people live/work in these districts based up their places of origin. There is a lot happening in the Chinese District, lots of pizza and pasta restaurants in the Italian District, and lots of rainbow flags in the Castro District. If the Salt Lake Valley was divided into districts, I think mine would be called the White District. Which district do you live in?
- Take advantage of restrooms when they are around. Otherwise, you'll be walking from one end of the wharf to the other (yes, from pier 44 & 1/2 down to pier 1) when Ryan starts his ever-popular yelling at inanimate objects - "no poo, don't come out yet!" So, after 10 more minutes of walking, we finally found a high-quality (not) restaurant/bar and took care of business.
- Humidity takes quites the toll on our junk food. I opened a bag of animal crackers and it was soggy within 1 hour. We also left Ryan's big round lollipop out overnight and awoke to a sticky, melted-lollipop mess.
- Seafood on Fisherman's Wharf was good, as was the Ghiradelli chocolate.
- The Pacific Ocean is very cold. It has been over 7 years since I have visited California and have since been to much warmer beaches. But it was a fun afternoon in Santa Cruz and Ryan had a great time burying Dave and he didn't seem to mind the sand in his pants until we were walking to the game and he would stop and scream "mom! My thing itches" and proceed to scratch himself (but his th's sound like f's and he has a slight southern drawl, so it sounded like "mom, ma fing itches!") The guys behind us got a real kick out of it. How could you not laugh?
- Google maps are not always right, especially when you have the wrong zip code in your search field.
- Nobody (including Ryan here) cares about San Jose State football. It reminded me of Utah football in the 1990's, before the stadium was rebuilt. It seated about 30,000-ish, and about 1/2 of the seats were empty and 1/4 of the seats were filled with fans from the visiting team. We didn't get strip-searched at the gates to confiscate every last little bit of outside food or drink (just a pat-down of the backpack to check for alcohol) and the line for the women's bathroom was a mile long. There were no face-painters or tailgaters and if we wanted, we could have parked right next to the stadium. It was a fun game with a few frustrating moments when the Utes just couldn't get into the endzone or kick a field goal. We miss Sakoda!
- Ryan loves to walk and run and can do it for miles at a time.
- Most important thing learned: we are good at vacationing and should do it more often.
