Good-bye, San Francisco.

Our building was the one on the left. We lived off an alley.

Before we “move on” from San Francisco, we thought we’d share what we liked/disliked about the city and what we learned from the month we were there.

San Fran is an incredible city. There is SO much culture there that we really loved. Each neighborhood truly has it’s own personality that’s evident the moment you step foot there. We’re probably biased because we lived in between both, but Chinatown and the Italian neighborhood were our favorites. You actually felt like you were stepping foot in these countries when you went there!

We also loved how beautiful the city was. When you were walking along the top of a hill, you could look down and usually see the water in the distance. We lived near the Bay Bridge and saw the most incredible views just walking down our street. The city was also really clean and had such pretty flowers and trees everywhere you looked.

There was a vibrancy to the city…you always felt like there was something exciting going on. Usually there was :). We loved that. The entire city really felt like an adventure. Coming from laid back San Diego, this was a pretty big difference from what we had known. I think that only being in San Fran for a month made it a bit overwhelming. We don’t do anything small…it’s pretty much go big or go home. Trying to fit in every experience the city had to offer in a month was a bit exhausting.

We managed to do a good job of getting to do as much as we did. We’re plum worn out from such a busy month! Seattle is going to be a nice change of pace. Someone told us that a month in San Fran would be more than enough, and I think we’d have to agree. It’s an awesome city to visit, but we couldn’t live there.

It got frustrating trying to go anywhere. We could never find parking and when we did, it was about 20 min. away. Getting groceries was a huge hassle and walking everywhere got to be tiring. (We did lose weight without trying though!) Those hills are just as big as they look in pictures and walking up them everyday isn’t on our top 10 list :).

The city was also INCREDIBLY expensive. Food, parking, entertainment…all of it was so much money.  Just to go through one toll would be $6! I think we realized just how “relative” our thinking had become when I saw parking for $20 and said, oh that’s not bad at all. Oh, and it was $20 for a few hours. I can’t believe how much our definition of  “expensive” has changed in such little time.

We are really happy that we got to spend a month in the city, but we’re also glad we were just there for a month. We learned a lot about ourselves and how to make small changes in our lifestyle. We learned to live without a dishwasher (*gasp*), washer/dryer, parking spot, nearby grocery store, TiVo, and a quiet place to live (we lived by a REALLY loud bar). We were pretty spoiled in Atlanta and have realized that our life isn’t determined by what we have. We’ve got each other, our health, and this awesome adventure. We learned that things we thought we had to have (like the things listed above) aren’t really necessary. People survive everyday washing dishes by hand, and dangit, we survived too :).

This whole trip has been a learning process. Every place we visit, we pick up a new idea to implement in our life. When you move to a new place, it’s always a great time to make a change. Justin decided to start eating vegetables and once we stepped foot in San Fran, he made the change. A lot of people who are in the same day-to-day rut want to make changes, but there isn’t anything to really jumpstart it. For us, moving to new places had encouraged us to evaluate our lives and our relationship and strive to make them even better as we move along.

We’re really happy that we did this trip. It’s been life changing, and in many cases life awakening for us. San Francisco taught us a lot and we plan to put it into action in Seattle. “Move” with us and start something new in your life that you’ve always wanted to do! Oh, and thanks for following us along the way. It means so much to hear from you guys!

Welcome to the City by the Bay.

(Justin’s Recap)

On Sunday, we got up, ate breakfast at the hotel, and then got back on the road for our last little bit of the trip up to San Francisco. Before, we got to San Francisco we made a stop in Palo Alto to see Stanford University. It’s a really nice campus and reminded us both of a bit nicer version of “that school” in Athens. We made sure to stop by the stadium where the football team plays. We couldn’t see in to the field, but the surroundings were very pretty and surrounding by trees.

After snapping some pictures we headed over to the little downtown area to grab some lunch at a place called Pluto’s. They had excellent salads and sandwiches as well as a very unique Amber Ale beer, which looked like apple cider and tasted quite good.

The billboard behind me says "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington"...soon I will.

After lunch we made the final trek into the city of San Francisco. The rain had started and it was coming down pretty good as we were coming into the city. The city is just as we pictured it with rolling hills of houses and buildings. It was hard to get good pictures of the city in the rain and through the car windshield, but we got a couple.

To make unpacking a bit easier we paid for daily parking in the lot across from our new place and proceeded to quickly unpack all of our stuff in order to try and beat out any the heavy rain that was coming. The apartment is up a couple sets of stairs so we both were pretty tired after carrying all of our stuff up the stairs several times. We must have gone up the stairs at least 15 times between the two of us!

This is really similar to what our street looks like.

The apartment building is not all that nice and neither are the hallways. However, the apartment itself is actually pretty nice and homey. It’s well-furnished and there’s plenty of room to put our things. Considering this was the only apartment we could find in the city, we were really pleasantly surprised. We will have to live without a dishwasher or a washer/dryer, but it’s only for a month. It’s all a learning experience.

Living/Dining Room

All this stuff to carry/unpack = exhaustion.

After taking some time to unpack our bags, we knew two things needed to happen 1) we needed food and 2) we had to move our car to our assigned parking. The parking here is really horrible. We have a pass that allows us to park in a vicinity of the city, but not a specific lot. We ended up walking over to Chinatown a block or so away and eating our first meal. It was pretty good, but nothing special. After dinner, we walked back to the apartment to move our car. Luckily, we found a spot about 10 min away but on a really steep street. By the time we walked back to the apartment we were exhausted.

Dinner in Chinatown (pic taken with phone).

Our car was parked down this hill.

Pretty garden on our walk back.

We’re very happy with the apartment and look forward to seeing all that this City by the Bay has to offer us!

Cruisin’ the Coast

***Please note that 99% of these pictures were taken in our moving car!!***

Saturday morning we were up early to finish packing our car. I don’t know if packing is the right word, it was more like cramming. When you try to fit all of your stuff in a tiny Honda Accord, it gets a little tricky. We managed to get everything in, take a last look around the apartment, and hit the road.

I’m not gonna lie…I did cry a little while we were pulling away. We were both sad. It also didn’t help that Justin played a Train song that I had told him would always remind me of San Diego. The song has nothing to do with a city, but I made the words fit :). It’s a really great song. Listen to it here.

Once we made it out of the city, we realized just how excited we were to explore San Francisco. We know that a part of us will fall in love with every city we visit, so it will always be a little hard to leave. That’s part of the trip though–learning to live in the moment and be joyful in each day we are given.

Our route took us up by Los Angeles, through Malibu and Santa Barbara, and finally to Monterey for the night. We were honestly blown away by how beautiful the drive was. For 80% of the trip we were sandwiched in between the mountains and the ocean. Gorgeous yellow and purple flowers covered the hillsides, grape fields could be seen for miles, and the endless blue ocean followed us the entire way. We decided everyone needs to make this drive at least once in their life. Yes, it’s that amazing.

Along the way we decided to make a couple stops. One of Justin’s favorite things to do is to visit other college campuses. It’s pretty interesting to see how other schools are set up. Our first stop was Pepperdine University in Malibu. We’d both heard it was a gorgeous school tucked in a hill overlooking the ocean and it definitely didn’t disappoint. It wasn’t really a school we could see being a student at–too ritzy for us–but it was beautiful none-the-less.

Our next stop was Santa Barbara. One of our favorite shows, PSYCH, is set in the city so we were excited to see what it was like. We only got to stop for about an hour or so, but we really wished we could have stayed longer. It’s not as big of a city as we had originally thought, but it’s gorgeous. It reminded us of a “downtown Decatur” area set in the mountains–really laid back and cutesy. We made a stop at The University of California at Santa Barbara and decided that we would enroll there in a heartbeat. Where else could you go surfing after class and then go hiking in the mountains the next day??

After a quick lunch, we continued up the coast. From Santa Barbara to Monterey there isn’t much civilization. Imagine being up in the mountains, winding your way for miles and miles. That’s what we did. For about 3 hours. Parts of the drive were a bit scary since you were up so high on cliffs, but it was more gorgeous than anything we had ever seen. We were both in dire need of a bathroom break by the end, and Justin was exhausted from driving such windy roads, but we were both incredibly happy we took this route. We could have taken an interstate that would have gotten us to Monterey about 1 1/2 quicker, but where’s the adventure in that??

My goofy husband "stretching".

We finally made it to Monterey, checked in to our hotel, ate dinner, and crashed for the night. Tomorrow we’ll post our arrival in San Fran!