I set out to plan an Anniversary trip for Andrew and I and I knew with it being July, I didn't want to go anywhere blisteringly hot. I had narrowed my search down between Seattle and San Francisco...both great options, both places we had expressed a desire to visit. So, the final decision came to $. Which was the best value and I am happy to report that San Francisco was the better value by over $300 per person!! 
I booked our trip through Expedia.com and I was able to book our flight and hotel together and by bundling them together I saved $200+ per person. Expedia and other similar sites usually have great deals when bundling flight and hotel together. Be sure to do your research though, I compared flights separately and rooms separately and the best value for this trip was to bundle. Upon landing in San Francisco, our first reaction was...whew, it is chilly!! The city sits on the bay and it gets the cooler air from the Pacific and it seems that the cool air settles in the bay. To be honest, it felt amazing for July 4th weekend!!
We had an amazing hotel located right on the bay. We were not far from the airport so we had a great view of the planes landing and taking off. If it was warm enough, we had breakfast each morning out on the patio and enjoyed the lapping of the bay against the rocks and the view of the planes. If it was early enough, we also had the pleasure of watching the fog roll over the hillside from the Pacific into the Bay, then by mid day the fog would all be gone. Evening time rolls around, and the fog is back. It created a surreal atmosphere, otherworldly almost. I have to say, the weather was my tops in my book!"I travel because I would rather see something once than read about it a thousand times."
-Steven Manson
A tradition of ours when we do travel is we always enjoy visiting and watching a baseball game, if in season. We were lucky as the Oakland Athletics were home during our visit! We decided to walk a few blocks from our hotel, catch the BART, bart.gov ( San Francisco/Oakland area mass transit) and ride across the bay to Oakland. Riding any sort of mass transit can be scary at first, but once you have ridden in a couple different cities, you come to realize that they are all very similar in layout and procedure. We had a nice ride and it was kind of neat because our train traveled underneath the bay. We had a great afternoon for our baseball game and Oakland won!! Adding these sorts of adventures always make for a more memorable trip. We can mark O Coliseum off our list of MLB parks we have visited! O.co
On our journey home we had some unexpected delays at the airport thereby causing us to miss our connection flight from Phoenix back to St. Louis. When these unexpected things happen, its always best to just relax and know that its not worth getting all stressed out about. We ended up getting booked on the 'red eye' flight out of Phoenix and as a happy bonus, the airline upgraded us to first class. Neither one of us had ever flown first class so this was fun for us, even in the wee hours of the night!
Our adventure to San Francisco was a long weekend trip and it proved to us that we didn't need to spend an exorbitant amount of money or spend weeks away to have a memorable and enjoyable time! Always look for those shorter weekend getaways and take advantage of them. Sometimes you just need a break and change of scenery, and weekend trip is perfect for that!
Keep exploring and traveling friends...and remember "discovery consists not in seeking new lands but in seeing with new eyes." -Marcel Proust
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