Honeymoon San Francisco: Part 1--General Travel Info

While there are many romantic locations abroad, there's a lot to be said for exploring your own country. We have a lot to offer here in America, and I had never been to California. Since Derek and I ate so much Chinese food at Notre Dame, we decided to go to San Francisco and Northern California for a week after I took the bar exam. Who uses cheap, delicious, unhealthy food to choose their honeymoon location, I don't know. But it turned out to be a great trip.

There is a TON to do in Northern California. Really, I don't think a week is enough. We biked across the Golden Gate Bridge, visited Sausalito, toured vineyards and wineries, ate fresh strawberries from a stand on the Pacific Coast Highway, visited the Garlic Capital of the World, and so much more. I'll try to summarize the trip in a few posts.

First, you should know that renting a car from SFO is a pain in the you-know-what. I think we waited for an hour to get our car, that we had already reserved, just because the line at Hertz was so long. And this didn't seem to be a Hertz-specific problem. Make sure that you get a AAA Membership! This membership has more than paid for itself, even before this trip. I believe we paid less than $500 for our rental car, a Nissan Versa (a good percentage of this was California taxes and fees) for a full week.

We stayed in Pacifica, California, which is about 15-20 minutes south of San Francisco. Turned out this was a good move. We didn't have to pay for parking in the city, which gets pricey if you want to stay overnight, especially in a touristy area like Fisherman's Wharf (best parking in Fisherman's Wharf is on Beach between Taylor and Jones--$7.75 for the whole day if you arrive before 10am). Our hotel, Best Western Plus Lighthouse Hotel, offered us 20% off because we were staying for a whole week. We had a partial ocean view room, and next to the hotel there was a nice hill to climb, from which you could watch the sun set over the ocean. Very pretty.


At the hotel, I put my feet in the Pacific Ocean for the first time ever at Rockaway Beach. It was cold!

We found that it's not actually that hard to find free parking during the day in San Francisco, except in Fisherman's Wharf and Chinatown. There's a lot of parallel parking available on the sides of many streets--but make sure you don't get a ticket like Derek did! We got a $50 parking ticket for having our wheels turned the wrong way when parking on a hill. When parking uphill, you're supposed to turn your wheels away from the curb (correct me if I'm wrong), and when parking downhill, you turn your wheels toward the curb.

Derek insists that his wheels were turned the right way, so we're going to fight the ticket. We can't ignore the ticket since the car was a rental. Hertz would not only pay it and charge us reimbursement, but they'd charge us extra administrative fees.

All in all, I'm really glad we didn't stay in San Francisco proper. Many of the things to do aren't in San Francisco itself at all, so staying in Pacifica was a really good choice. And, of course, I like access to a beach (even a cold one).