Day 12: San Francisco Craziness!

So today we had a busy schedule! First Alcatraz tour of the day then meeting up with friends and family to tour San Fran a little bit! It started off really well, the Alcatraz tour was amazing, I am so glad we fit it in to our schedule, we were told it was a do not miss and boy was everyone right! The boat ride over was only about 15-20 mins long and very smooth, it was a foggy day so the views of the city and the bridges weren't the best but they were indicitive to San Fran so it was cool. Touring The Rock went pretty quickly since we were the first boat on the island, I highly recommend doing this for this reason alone! We wanted to do the Junior Ranger program but the shop that sells the 2$ guide was not open yet, so we went on and did our own thing with plans to do it later. While you tour the island you get a headset with a recorded tour guide so you can do a self guided tour. It worked very well. The kids really enjoyed it and had a great time. Once we completed the self guided tour we got the Junior Range guide and did that, only took another 20 mins or so and then they recieved their Jr Ranger Badges:). We took the ferry back and met with our cousin Bob and then met up with Geoff and the kids then my lovely friend, Terri and her wonderful daughter, Ashley! This is when the crazy begins! Though it was WONDERFUL to be with so many people and we were so excited to have them make the time to spend with us it was a little hard. The kids were very tired at this point in the trip and being way overstimulated made for some behavior I was not particulary happy with... We went and ate lunch and they were fine there but just walking around and whatnot they got a little antsy. It was great enjoying lunch with Terri and catching up, oh how I wish we were closer, she is such a dear friend! After lunch we walked over to see the Sea Lions, how cool was that, they just lay around on these floating docks, so cool! After that it was time for a pick me up and head to Ghiredellis (sp?). It was quite busy and with as many people as we had it was hard to manuver around and the kids were being little punks (leia and Jacob at least), they ticked me off at the wrong moment and got punished by not getting any ice cream, yes... Call me a mean Mommy, I dont care! Finally we found a place to squeez in to to eat but we found two tables apart from each other... Then get this, the table next to us opened and we kindly asked the gals that sat down there if they would switch with the other table so we could all sit next to each other and they said, NO! We were taken back with that, but whatever, not everyone is nice! After ice cream we headed back to the Wharf, said good bye to everyone and headed to the hotel to park the car and drop off our bags and then make our way to dinner where we would meet some more family in Chinatown! After going down the wrong street we finally made it and everyone was already seated. It was pretty neat, we were at a big round table with a lazy susan in the middle, we just ordered a bunch of different entrees and appitizers and just shared... I really liked doing it that way. It was super yummy and the kids did well, which was a relief concidering how they were earlier in the day. After dinner we strolled Chinatown, bought a dufflebag so we could bring all of the extra stuff we bought the last 2 weeks in back home and stopped at Starbucks for a nightcap and treat! All-in-All a great day, long and cranky at times, but a great day. Tomorrow will be our last full day and we aren't slowing down, we figured out a way to get all of our last min visits in... Stay tuned to see how it went:)