Honeymoon Trip: Day 5

Thursday!  Now that we had our bearings, and were pros at riding MUNI, we took the BART across the bay and headed on down to AT&T Park, where we caught a Giants-Rockies game.

Our tickets were at will-call, and everything went very smoothly!  We found our seats, which turned out to be in the very tip-top of the stadium.  Yikes!  It was a climb, but it was a gorgeous view from up there!

Nick's first order of business was to buy some cotton candy, of course!  This park is awesome in part because they let you bring in water bottles, soda, and food - so long as it isn't liquor!  We brought our leftovers from Swiss Louis with us, which made for a tasty lunch!  It was freezing cold at the very top of the park, especially since there is no "real" wall behind you, just chain link fence covered with some sort of tarp material.  

We moved after a few innings to go and explore the park. We really enjoyed the fact that they have standing room only areas throughout the outfield.  This was the best fan experience I have ever had at a ballpark (mainly going off of Miller Park experiences, so maybe not saying much).  

We also like their giant Coke bottle, which is apparently a slide for kids to go down!  I never knew that, but it made it more awesome.  We stayed in the SRO area for most of the rest of the game, and we almost caught two balls that came our way!!  Whenever the Giants hit a home run out into the stands or the bay, they spray these big fountains which are right behind the SRO area, so we got a little wet as well.    Eventually some season ticket holders offered us some seats that they knew were empty, since they knew the ticket holders and they weren't there that day.  Sweet!  We watched the rest of the game in comfort in the nice warm sun.  Didn't hurt that the Giants won!

After the game, we had a couple hours to make it over to our Segway Tour.  We stopped at a nearby McDonald's (review here) then caught a bus.  Terrible bus experience, but what do you expect?  It was rush hour in the SOMA district, just after a game let out.  The bus was CRAMMED with people.  We had to ride it all across town, essentially, which sucked, and took about 45 minutes.  But once we got over to Columbus we were alright.  We finished our McDonald's food in the company of a one-toed pigeon (which we nicknamed Stubs), then walked over to the City Segway Office.

Turns out we were the only ones signed up for that tour!  So we got a private tour guide.  We saw Fisherman's Wharf and views of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset.  Also, miraculously, no fog!  Pretty cool!

As the sun had set, our tour took in some of the sights at night in the city as well. 

After our Segway tour, we snagged some fries from In-N-Out (they were just okay), and went to grab the cable car at the turnaround, on our tour guide's advice.  It ended up kind of sucking, because we had to wait a long time for it to leave, and the guy in charge wasn't communicating why we hadn't left even though there were TONS of people waiting to get on and the cable car was pretty much full.  Made no sense.  Finally, though, we left and headed back to the other side of the bay.

Tonight was the night we switched hotels, so we got in the car and headed over to Alameda and the Coral Reef Inn.  Cute place!

More on our adventures at the beach and in San Francisco to come in the next post...

Honeymoon Trip: Day 4

Wednesday! Our first full day in the Bay Area.  We got ourselves up, grabbed some breakfast and geared up for a day in San Francisco.  Without any other serious plans, we thought we'd shoot for the Embarcadero to try to get some Alcatraz tickets in person, just in case some people had cancelled or something.

We had our second dismaying moment of the trip (#1 being no Alcatraz tickets/no printer at the hotel) when we hit heavy traffic at the Bay Bridge toll plaza at 9:50 a.m.  Isn't rush hour supposed to be over??  Apparently not.  We also did not know that there was a toll!  We were chagrined to find out that the toll goes down from $6 to $4 after 10 a.m., too, and we were missing it by mere minutes.  Rats!  Once we got through the toll booth snarl, traffic wasn't too bad, though certainly busy, on the bridge itself.  Here is a glimpse of us crossing bridge, from the passenger seat:

Once across the bridge and back on solid ground, we parked the car in an all-day lot for $20 and started walking up the Embarcadero toward Pier 33, where the Alcatraz Tours office is.  

Alas, there were still no tickets that we could obtain to get us out onto Alcatraz island itself.  Just harbor cruises, which wasn't what we wanted.  The best we would do would be getting a shot of the island at sunset while on our Segway tour the next day.

Our next item of business was to walk to a Walgreens to buy some MUNI/BART passes in order to get around the city!

Mission Accomplished!  Here we are on a streetcar.

We hopped on board a street car in the Wharf and headed to the Embarcadero MUNI station, where we could catch a train out to Golden Gate Park.  Time to get down to business!  I had high hopes for Golden Gate Park, since I had heard such wonderful things online.  Bison paddock! Equestrian Center!  Japanese Tea Garden!  California Academy of Sciences!

I don't know what I was expecting... you can read my Yelp review here, but suffice it to say that the park was WAY bigger than I'd anticipated, even looking at my map.  We didn't see the half of it before having to head back to catch a rush-hour MUNI train to get back to our car by the 5:00 parking expiration.  It was beautiful though!  I'd love to go back and do it justice.

For good measure, here is Nick sitting near the polo/soccer field just after arriving at GG Park.

When we got back to the station, we had a little time to kill before we had to be back at the car, so we took a moment to ride a cable car up and down California Street, which was an adventure!  We saw some neat buildings, as well.

Afterwards, we made our way back to the car on foot, stopping to mess around the plaza in front of the Ferry Building. We saw one of their toilet booth things, as well as a seagull enthusiastically consuming the carcass of a dead pigeon.  We also learned about the Embarcadero highway which was a complete disaster.  New information!

Back at our car and partially demoralized from hoofing it around the city, we formulated a game plan for the rest of the evening.  Super Husband used his powers of telephonic communication to book us a Segway tour for the next evening, and then we set course for a parking garage in the Wharf that we had seen earlier, advertising "2 hours free parking after 6 p.m. with validation from restaurants at Pier 39!"  We parked and walked across to the Pier to select a place at which to dine.  On the way, a nice middle-aged couple asked us to take their picture, and they returned the favor for us!

We looked around Pier 39 and decided to dine at Swiss Louis.  We enjoyed ourselves, and we had a lovely view of the sunset and some sea lions being lazy on the docks. We each ordered a shrimp dish.

After dinner we headed back to our hotel in Emeryville, then decided to relax by catching a movie at the nearby AMC theater, since we are Stubs card members.  We saw "The Campaign" and had a nice time!  Then it was time for sleep.

Next post: Thursday, when we smartly leave the car in Oakland and take in a Giants Game and a Segway Tour!

A Word On Being Married

Lately people have been asking me “So what’s it like being married?”  or “How’s married life?”

In the words of the late, great Lynette Sherman, “Well, I’ll tell you…”

It’s about the same.   We have known each other and dated one another for nearly seven years.  We’ve lived together for two and a half years.  We’ve got each other pretty well figured out, but we’re still learning as we go.

I think the main thing that has changed since the wedding is that our affection for one another has been renewed.  We kiss more and hug more.  I feel like we are more of a team now than ever.  I feel like he has my back, and I’ve got his.  We support each other and listen to each other.  We try to share the burdens in our lives so that we can lighten one another’s loads.  This has been true for a while, long before we got married, but I think going through that process really renewed our convictions and solidified our bond.

Now I feel like I can look out at the world and confidently say to it “So what?” whenever a challenge is thrown my way, because I know I’ve got my husband.  And now the world knows it.  We can take on anything.

Also, if you are on Pinterest, you are gonna come back and see alllll those wedding-related boards you follow and want to throw up.  It will take you forever to "unfollow" them all.

Honeymoon Trip: Day 3

Day three of our trip!  We woke up early again, hoping to see all we could see.  We had breakfast with a British couple on holiday, which was interesting.  They were very nice!

The first interesting thing we got to was Reno, which disappointingly involves a train station way down in a trench, so you can't really see much.  This is what I was able to capture:

Next it was on through the Nevada dessert, until we climbed in elevation into the Sierra Nevada mountains and entered California!  We went through the area of Donner Pass, where those unfortunate pioneers ate one another.  That was a sobering thought!  But now that area is home to plenty of people and the town of Truckee, which looked like a fun place to visit, actually.  They have a former Bank of America that is now the Bar of America, if that gives you any insight into the personalities of those good people!

We watched the scenery go by from our roomette for a while, then it was time for lunch.  This being the final day of the train trip, they were out of certain things in the dining car.  Super Husband had a Caesar salad, but since they were out of chicken to go on top, he asked for bacon.  And they delivered!

The paper hat SH is sporting was acquired during our stopover in Salt Lake City the previous night.  Some other young people, who were California-bound to stay, had managed to win some paper hats from the dining car attendant, who normally only gives them to small children.  When we were making small-talk with them, we mentioned it was our honeymoon and they insisted that we take their hats!  I didn't wear mine around, but Super Husband was lookin' good in his.

After breakfast we sat in the Observation Car for a while, playing Monopoly Deal and a round of Scrabble.  Let me just say that Monopoly Deal is by far much more fun than regular Monopoly.  We were also listening to the California State Railroad Museum volunteer, who was providing descriptions of the towns we passed through and any interesting scenery.  After Sacramento, we returned to our roomette to pack up and get ready for the end of the trip.  We also saw the mothball fleet at Suisun Bay, which was weird, because it was all farm land and a marsh, then BAM!  - big ships.

After crossing the Carquinez Straight, we passed through Martinez ("home of the martini" - we are skeptical) and on toward Richmond ... then voila!  

Emeryville!  We were so excited to get there.  We hurried off the train (which by the way, arrived an hour early!! what???) and picked up our Budget rental car, which had been upgraded for free.  Guess what they gave us?

A Mazda 6.  Why is this hilarious?  Because that's what Super Husband drives at home!  This was a newer model, but it was still pretty much the familiar car we knew (just white, and not the sport version).  Here is SH with the car outside of our first hotel, the Extended Stay America - Emeryville/Oakland.

Despite what you may read on Yelp, this place was just fine.  You can read my review here, so I won't go into great detail, but it served our needs and was relatively inexpensive.  Except Super Husband will want me to note that they did not have Comedy Central.  So we watched the news and "Scooby Doo" a lot instead.

We dumped our stuff in the room, and were dismayed to realize there was no "business center" where we could print off Alcatraz and Giants tickets like we had planned!  We did a bit more research, and realized that there were no Alcatraz tickets to be had, anyway.  Sorrow!  We kicked ourselves a little bit for that, since a bit more planning on the front end would have ensured that we got to Alcatraz island and got to walk around.  Oh well!  Next time.

We headed over to the Emeryville IKEA, literally moments away from the hotel, to drown our sorrows in chicken fingers and lingonberry soda.  We called the Giants ticket line and ordered tickets for the Thursday day game, then had a merry time exploring IKEA!

It was a Tuesday evening, so there was NO ONE here.

Super Husband loved this chair.

We have this wine rack!

Fortified by gazing upon inexpensive, heavy, assemble-it-yourself furniture and sleek accessories, we headed back to the hotel to gear up for the next day and get some shut-eye.  We might have come home with a few silly things too, like a long-handled bath scrubber and some drawer pulls and handles.  Can you blame us?  So cheap!

Honeymoon Trip: Day 2

We woke up early on the train and had some breakfast (scrambled eggs and bacon for me!), then headed to the Observation Car to catch all the scenery.  On the second day we would be entering Colorado, so today was the big day for beautiful views.  We had heard that seats in the Observation Car fill up fast during the portion in the Rockies, so we wanted to make sure we got some seats!

For anyone who is curious about following along on the California Zephyr route, here is a link to a play-by-play with descriptions of all the places that the train stops as well as major landmarks encountered along the way.

We rolled into Denver, and only one of us got off the train at a time so as not to lose our seats in the Observation Car.  Here is me inside the train, while Nick is outside!

Once we left Denver, we headed up into the mountains.  To give you an idea of how crazy it was with people taking pictures, I give you this:

Nick catching a picture using his tablet

Everything was pretty beautiful.  I'll place some images here so you can get an idea.  I apologize that they are mostly either blurry or they have the reflection from the train window in them.  It was hard to get a good shot, but everything was fabulous!

In the final photo, you can see that the terrain has changed.  We weren't quite into Utah yet, still Colorado, but the colors of the rocks had begun to shift and the plant life was getting more sparse and less lush.   After a while, we'd had enough of trying to snap pictures of every single gorgeous vista and we had some lunch.  For anyone who is curious, this is what the menu offering and pricing was like:

Click to enlarge!

All of our meals were included in the price of our roomette, so we never had to pay out of pocket for any meals.  Considering that we bought our $600-$900 roomette for $13.75-worth of buy-up points plus earned points one way and $206.25 in buy-up points plus earned points the other way, that's nothing to sneeze at!!  

After lunch we gave up on the Observation Car and went to take a nap in our roomette.  The train had passed through Glenwood Springs and the next stop was Grand Junction, where we got a chance to hop out of the train again.  In Grand Junction there is a beautiful old former train depot, named Pufferbelly Station, that has fallen into disrepair and is unused.  It's a shame, because it's gorgeous!  I think there are a few restoration efforts underway, but for now the building is bank-owned and waiting to be rescued.  Such a shame!

After that, we passed into Utah.  We returned to the Observation Car for a while since it looked like the scenery was spicing up again, and we heard that there would be a narrated sight-seeing portion from here until Sacramento.  

One of the sights that was pointed out was a spot on the side of the plateaus where the Colorado - Utah border is called out in writing.  Can you spy it below?

After this it was pretty much more of the same all the way to Salt Lake City.  On the way we passed through Green River, which boasts a building with the words "You Are Here" on it:

Since Utah wasn't all that interesting to us, and it had gotten dark, we called it a night and went to sleep.  Stay tuned for day 3!

Honeymoon Trip: Day 1

We said goodbye to all of our fabulous friends and family and the incomparable Alex and Mike drove us to the train!  We were nervous and excited.  It's scary trying to catch transportation when you're not positive how things work.  Once you've done it, you're okay.  But I was nervous about being on time.  We were there in plenty of time, though, and we got on the Hiawatha line to Chicago just fine.

It was a pleasant ride!  We got to Union Station a little early, even, if I recall.  Once there, we had to figure out where to go for our other train.  There was a huge line for the "All Amtrak Trains" area, and that made me nervous that they were doing some sort of slow-moving security check.  It was 12:30, so we had some time, but we wanted to grab lunch and I was afraid we'd be in that line forever.

We ran up to the food court and got some Pizza Hut personal pans, then ran back down to stand in line.  We were there for a few minutes when it suddenly began to move and the line was resolved within minutes, like it never happened.  I still don't know what the hold-up was; I've never seen a line for a train at Union Station before like that.  Once in, we sat in the waiting area for a bit until we heard some announcement for a Sleeper passenger lounge that we didn't remember/know existed.

Sleeper Car Passenger Lounge, Union Station

After that we moved over there, checked in, and sat eating our pizza and enjoying the free soda they have.  It's MUCH more comfortable and quiet over there.  We sat at a table with a nice retired couple (which would become a trend), who were eating hot dogs.  It was pretty crowded even though it was more plush.

After a short wait, our train was boarding.  We got on and got situated in our roomette, which was okey dokey.  Our sleeper car attendant was Johnny, who was awesome and a lot of fun. We were home-free at this point, so we stretched out as best we could and enjoyed the ride.

Laid back in the roomette

Dinner was exciting since it was our first meal on the train.  I think we both had the steak.  We sat with a nice retired couple, who were on their way back from a wedding I think.  Everyone loved us because we'd just gotten married and were on our honeymoon.  I think we might have played a game or two before getting to bed.

Dining car

That night we went through Nebraska, and I had trouble staying asleep.  I was on the bottom, Nick was on top bunk.  I think he didn't sleep solidly either, and the next day we agreed to switch.

That's it for day one!  Nothing too exciting, mostly just unwinding.  Stay tuned for more!

Here It Is: The Wedding Recap

On September 15 Super Fiance and I said our vows before our family and friends.  Now he is Super Husband!

Everything was wonderful, and it was over so quickly that I don't know why I spent 2.5 years planning all of it!!  Our friends and family were very supportive and from what I hear everyone had a very nice time.  I hope so!

There was a small cupcake incident, but we were reimbursed for the mishap (a few moldy strawberry cupcakes that did not get served, don't worry) and now we get some free cupcakes from Milwaukee Cupcake Co!  Score!  Unintended greatness.  I only had one or two of those little tasties, so I'd love to grab a couple to relive the magic. 

Our photographer, Kayla Williams, was wonderful.  She put in a lot of hours and still had our photos ready and waiting when we got back from San Francisco!  On top of that she is an awesome friend and a lean, mean trivia-playing machine.  We are so lucky to have met her!

Cory at Country Inn & Suites did an amazing job - I am going to miss having him at my beck and call doing things like creating centerpieces and making all kinds of arrangements for me!  He went above and beyond and we had a terrific experience working with him as well as the catering staff from Champps.  

Happy to say that it's over and it was fantastic!  I'll be coming back on here to post about our adventures in California soon.  For anyone who for some reason isn't on Facebook, here are a couple of photos from the wedding: