Franeks Take the West Coast: San Francisco, CA

Hey everyone,

The next place on our list to stop was San Francisco, California. We took drove our rental car down there, and our first stop was the Walt Disney Family Museum. This was something I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend $25 each on, but it was one hundred percent worth it! We only gave ourselves an hour and a half in there, thinking like many of our museum stops so far, that would be plenty of time. We were wrong! We could’ve easily spent another hour or longer in there. It was overwhelming, yet so fascinating. My Dad would LOVE it!! Each room had so much information and cool items in it that you could spend 30 minutes in easily in each room. I loved our time there. Next we headed to check into our hotel and drop off the rental car. The Marriot Marquis SanFran was AWESOME! The gym was the best part, humongous and soooo nice. I was thrilled that they had a stair master! Brings me back to my USF days when I was prepping for the wedding. After that we headed over to Rocco’s Cafe to meet Madi’s friend for lunch. It was a pretty good little Italian place, and the lady working was from NC! What are the odds?! That evening we took the cable car down to Hyde Street and walked around the Fisherman’s Wharf. We had a great time watching the Sea Lions. Dinner was at Wipeout Bar and Grill on the pier. We hiked up to Lombard Street (it’s quite steep getting to the top) and had a great sun setting view of the city. Then we headed back to get some sleep!

Day two was JAM packed. We started the morning off at the Hollywood Cafe for breakfast (YUM!) this place was a little while in the wall but so so good. They had a great early 2000s Pandora station going which we LOVED. We headed to meet our tour bus at Dylan’s tours. This tour group was awesome! We hit just about everything in the city that we wanted to see. It was six hours long, but honestly couldn’t have been any shorter if you want to see the main points. This included going over to Sausalito and the Muir Woods. The woods were just big enough to get us in to see some huge trees, but not an all day thing (which we liked). Our guide lastly stopped by the Marin Headlines since we had a bit of time to spare, which may have been my favorite part of the day! That view was the best to me! Although Twin Peaks had a great view of the WHOLE city too. We grabbed some dinner at In-N-Out (had to) and then for dessert: the Baked Bear where I got a custom ice cream sandwich OMG SO GOOD. Lastly we did the Alcatraz night time tour, which was awesome. We got to learn more about the prison and tour the island. The audio tour was put together really well. It was a lot of fun. But also kind of eerie. 

Our time in SanFran went so quickly, we could have easily spent another two days there. It was our favorite stop so far! We definitely plan on coming back there some day!! Our next stop is a little more chill in Monterey. Back on the train we go!!

Must dos in SanFran:

- Indulge at the Baked Bear

- Eat Breakfast at Hollywood Cafe

- Explore Alcatraz

- Take a Dylan’s Tour

- Head over to the Marin Headlands

Movie & TV Show for San Fran: Full House(obvs) and Thats So Raven, Shutter Island and Princess Diaries 

Thanks for keeping up,

- Olivia :)

Franeks Take the West Coast: Napa, CA

Hey everybody,

Napa Valley came next on our trip! We hopped off the train in Oakland and rented a car through enterprise. Literally the worst service ever at the broadway location. They were an hour and a half late to pick us up at the train station and we still waited an hour to get our car once we got there. I will definitely be making a call to corporate! However, once we got on the road we had beautiful views! We stopped at Gott’s Roadside for lunch. It was DELISH! Definitely recommend. Everything in California is pricey, so for a “fast food” type place, it wasn’t cheap, but it was WAY better quality than most quick service food. Next we headed up to Sterling Vineyards. I am so happy we picked this as our winery stop. Number one, they have an aerial tram that takes you up (it was so cool!). Number two, it had an AMAZING terrace and view from the top! We did the general admission tour, but got to learn a lot about how wine is made. We also had the opportunity to taste four samples of wine (they were decently sized). The white was really good, but the red merlot honestly tasted like an old shoe lol. Madis face was priceless when trying it. Needless to say, we still aren’t wine drinkers, but did it all for the experience. 

On our way back to check into our hotel, Springhill Suites, we stopped at the Welcome to Napa sign for some photos. After checking into our hotel and bringing our bags to the room, we headed over to Oxbow Market for dinner at Kitchen Door. It was pricey again, but delicious. I’m sure those of us who know Madi and I can tell who’s food is who’s from our pictures. Madi was craving frozen yogurt, so we found a delicious little place across the way that is a Christian store called, Yobelle Frozen Yogurt. It was really good and we got to jam to some Chris Tomlin. We hit the hay early as we had to be up at 4:30am for our hot air balloon tour. We called the weather line as instructed when we woke up and they said we were good to go. However when we arrived, got checked in, and loaded into the vans, they decided to cancel because of fog and high winds. I was SUPER disappointed. They did give a full refund, so I did some googling and found a place in San Diego that does hot air balloons, so cross your fingers that we will have good weather when we are there so we can participate! Hot air ballooning is on my bucket list after all!! 

Overall, Napa was a great stop. It is something you must do if you’re going to be near that part of California. Even Madi said it was worth stopping in. Our next segment will be in San Francisco. We have a chill first day followed by a packed second day. We want to try to see as much as possible in each of these cities since we don’t know when we will be back! 

Must dos in Napa Valley:

- Stop at Gott’s Roadside 

- Explore in Sterling Vineyards 

- Eat at Kitchen Door

- Book a Hot Air Balloon Tour (and pray the weather is good!!)

I also feel like in each place that we stop I associate it with a movie or TV show and then want to watch it. So here are what I’ve thought of on our stops so far:

- Seattle: 10 Things I Hate About You

- Portland: MTV’s the Real World: Portland

- Napa: The Parent Trap
Who wants a movie marathon when I get back! (Obviously these movies are in the Franek collection already ;))

Thanks for keeping up,

- Olivia :)

Franeks Take the West Coast: Portland, OR

Hey all,

So we are cruising right along! Our second stop was Portland, and we got there by Amtrak train from Seattle. For this portion, we got coach seats since this trip was only about four hours long. We were super surprised at how big and comfy the seats were! Coming off of a plane, these seats were basically luxury. They’re about double the width of an airplane seat and only two people per side. 

Once we arrived in Portland, we uber-ed to our hotel, The Crowne Plaza Portland Convention Center, which while it was outdated in some areas, had a lot of perks! One was free shuttle service within three miles of the hotel (which is a lot of things in Downtown Portland). Another was free bike rentals, including locks. This was my favorite perk when I planned out trip because I planned out this twenty mile bike adventure for Madi and I. Well, we made it almost that whole way! We biked down to Catherdral Park by St. John’s bridge, and Newton’s law taught us a lot. What goes up must come down right? Well what goes down must come back up in some cases. That includes going back up a 15% gradient hill for a quarter of a mile with a bike. And then going up and down smaller hills the rest of our journey. As Madi put it “at first I was biking with you in front of me, the sun shining and the breeze blowing and thought ‘wow what a beautiful day on the West Coast with my wife’ but then as we came up the hill, across the bridge and down the other side (around mile 12) I thought ‘I’m gonna kill her’”. Ahh, can you feel the love guys? Yeah, biking sixteen miles up and down Portland was enough for us. We put up the bikes and used our trusty legs or Uber the rest of our time here. We did however, use part of our long bike ride to get to Salt and Straw. This was the BEST ice cream we have had in a long long time. With unique flavors like pear and goat cheese or honey lavender, we decided to stick to our guns and get the cinnamon snickerdoodle (OMG SO GOOD). It was between that and the sea salt and Carmel. We will let the you hipsters eat those other flavors, we were OVERLY satisfied with the choice we made. 

That night we headed over to Killer Burger for dinner. It was delicious. Any place that advertises that every burger comes with bacon is for me. We finished our first night off at Powell City of Books, a huge bookstore with both new and used books. This place is like McKays on steroids, but the prices are not as good as McKays. That didn’t stop me from buying a few things! I probably could’ve spent hours there (as I do in McKays) but limited myself to an hour. 

After giving our legs and our brains a good rest, we awoke to a new day and new adventures. Our second day was spent exploring more Portland standards like Voodoo Doughnut, Pittock Mansion and the Japanese Gardens. We saved our doughnuts for the train ride, and had brunch at Byways Cafe which was a cute little diner with food that was pretty good. Here is where we ran into trouble. After ubering to Pittock Mansion , we go to buy our tickets and they tell us “those doughnuts can’t come in” *insert eye roll*. So we decided to just walk around the outside and see the spectacular view. The view was worth the Uber price alone. It was incredible. Next we made a pit stop at the Rose Test Garden which was free and so beautiful. June is its peak time, but there were some gorgeous blooms right now. Next was the Japanese Gardens, which after I paid for what I thought were super overpriced tickets, they tell us again “no food allowed” but at least here an attendant was nice enough to hold our box of doughnuts for us. You the real MVP lady. The Japanese Gardens were nice, very tranquil, but very small. It took us about 45 minutes to casually walk through them. So in my head I just pretended like the Rose Garden was included in the ticket price instead of being free. (These are the kind of things that I have to do since I am usually pretty frugal). 

Our time in Portland was well spent. I am glad we didn’t plan to stay there super long, as we did pretty much everything we wanted to in actual Portland, but Oregon itself has so much to offer. We definitely will be back to visit Oregon again one day, but maybe not Portland itself. We will see! 

Next up: Napa!! After a night on the train. California here we come! (Immediate regrets after typing this, sorry for all who will now have the OC theme song stuck in your head forever as I now do). 

Must Dos in Portland

- Bike (or uber) to St Johns Bridge, pack a picnic for Cathedral Park

- Visit the Rose Test Garden

- Browse in Powell City of Books

- Eat at Killer Burger

- Indulge at Voodoo Doughnut

- Enjoy the view at Pittock Mansion

Thanks for keeping up,

- Olivia