After my day on Alcatraz, I was able to meet up with my mom and Aunt Joy for dinner.
After dinner we walked over to the Nike store to find our names on the wall. It was pretty cool to see my name up there….with the thousand of others.
See all that red and while behind us? Those are thousands of little tiny names.
Then we went inside. I have to admit I thought it was a mistake. I figured we could shop tomorrow. Thankfully these two have done this race twice before and knew what a nightmare the day before the race is. I wish I had taken pictures of our “dressing room”…aka the treadmill in the corner that we high jacked and made our own. There was a long line to try stuff on so we just tried on the shirts and jackets over our shirts. We got a few looks at first, then suddenly people were just striping down to tank tops and trying on clothes all around us. It was weird.
The next morning we headed out to explore San Francisco! Brittany arrived late the night before so we wanted to take her to see her name. This is has close as she was able to get. Check out all those people!
We got a group shot outside the Nike store in line. Yep, I wrote that right. There was a 15 minutes line to just get into the Nike store. It was crazy! But, really a great time to take a few pictures.
Once inside we really didn’t need to shop, but Joy’s friend wanted to pick up a few things. While she dealt with the madhouse we did my favorite thing…took pictures!
This is a huge map that maps out the course.
Brittany and I being the mannequins….that you can’t see behind us.
This was the check out LINE
Look what I found! My favorite! Swarovski you are fabulous!
After the Nike Store we made it across the street and decided to head to Macy’s to pick up a few things. They have restaurants inside Macy’s! So we stopped for some lunch….and it was amazing!
Joy kept making fun of me for taking pictures….for you Joy!
Brittany enjoying her first meal. Since they gave her the wrong salad they gave her a second complete meal to replace the little salad. Our whole table was really happy about that because her lunch was delicious!
After lunch we decided it was too crowded in San Fran so Joy had a brilliant idea to head over to the Jelly Bean factory. I must admit I wasn’t too thrilled because it was a hour away….but I soon repented.
While we waited for our tour to start Brit and I had fun taking pictures in front of these huge pumpkins and amazing Jelly Belly art. Did you know Jelly Belly’s were art?! Me neither!
After our tour, which we weren’t allowed to take any pictures of….ahhhemmm, Joy….we explored their amazing gift shop. I was very grateful my kids weren’t with me. I know we would have ended up buy way more jelly beans than we did….and we bought A LOT! My favorite were the “Belly Flops” ( the jelly beans that aren’t PERFECT but still amazing…they sale as belly flops) and Bean Boozled. Bean Boozzles were the gross jelly beans and the yummy jelly beans in the same box. The problem is they look identical. So the black one might be Licorice or it could be skunk. The brown one could be chocolate or dog food. We’ve had a lot of fun with those!
They had a Jelly Belly tasting bar. Did you know they also make gross flavors like skunk, barf, and booger? Brit wasn’t too sure about trying the gross flavors….I’m pretty sure she tried a mild one.
I decided to try skunk. I was sure it wouldn’t be that strong of a flavor and I could handle it. I was WRONG! I bit into the Jelly Belly and had to spit it out. (I was wondering why they had a trashcan right in the line….now I know!) I had to then try Tabasco sauce Jelly Belly to get the flavor out. Then I couldn’t feel my tongue so I went and bought some chocolate and that magically fixed it all.
These two wild ones were so fun to travel with! We had so much fun together and I can’t wait to do this again!
The was our view on our drive back to the city. Isn’t the Golden Gate Bridge amazing! And in the lower right hand corner you can see the amazing traffic we were in.
Now this picture would have been perfect except for Joy’s hands and phone. What makes this picture SCARY is that Joy was DRIVING our car! She’s a maniac!
Joy really, really, really wanted to go to this fortune cookie factory she had been to before. After such a fun Jelly Belly experience I had big ideas of what this fortune cookie factory would be like.
It was in Chinatown…which made sense. Chinatown was really sad and depressing to me.
Once I realized the address for this factory was something Alley….and it meant literally the ALLEY, I knew we weren’t in Jelly Belly standards anymore. I would have taken a picture of the factory but they charged $.50 and yes I’m that cheap. So just picture a man sitting on a stool pulling dough from a machine, shaping it, then putting it on a pan to dry. We only walked two feet inside, Joy bought some cookies and we left.
I had two things I really really really wanted to see/do. One was Lombard street and the other was have ice cream at Ghirardelli. We did Lombard street that night so the pictures are pretty dark. It was awesome nonetheless. I walked it and the other girls drove it. I really wanted to go back when it was daylight, but our trip was too short!
After dinner at In-N-Out (oh I love that place!) we headed back to the hotel to get ready for the big event! We were all super tired since it was almost 11 pm and we were getting up at 4:30 the next morning for our race.
But suddenly we found ourselves heading to Target. We needed fanny packs for the race and had forgotten to get them while we were out that day. This Target was Two stories and had the most amazing cart carrying thing to carry your cart from one floor to the next. I don’t even know how I missed taking a picture of that!
Finally after a long day (two for me) of running around we head to bed around midnight….because tomorrow…
