We were graciously hosted by the Visit Concord for our accommodations and received complimentary passes to some excursions in San Francisco.
With Minnesota winter being as long as it was this year, we decided to skip out on the end of it and explore somewhere a little more sunny; California. You know, the “golden” state. And honing in on that golden mentality, we stayed in the San Francisco area.
We left super early on Saturday morning and arrived around 9am in SFO (San Francisco airport). I’d done some research into public transportation, but thought it would be easiest with a toddler (or namely, our toddler) to just rent a car. So I had booked it through Hotwire on the way to the airport that morning. I know, this minor detail slipped my mind until the last minute… But it worked out good and we managed to rent a car for about $32 a day.
We calculated to ride the BART (the public train, similar to the Northstar here in Minnesota) and for the three of us to ride it to Concord from the airport it was going to be about $30 and take us about 1.5 hours so we decided to cut the time in half and pay about the same.
So our first place to visit was Concord, which is about 45 minutes outside of San Francisco. The city actually reminded me of where we live now which is just outside of the cities, where you’re close enough to go into downtown but you’re also far enough out to feel like it’s a family atmosphere. They have lots of shopping and dining, plus tons of parks and little cafes – it was such a cozy and fun town, I wished we could have stayed more than just a few days!
Hilton Concord
We stayed at the Hilton in Concord, which was (and I’m not fluffing here) one of the nicest hotels we’ve stayed in! We stayed in one of their suites which meant there was a kitchen area, main bathroom, a living room with a pull-out couch, master bedroom and deluxe master bathroom. And when you stay in one of their suites, you gain daily access to their Executive lounge where they have complimentary cocktails and appetizers each night and continental breakfast in the morning.
Even if you don’t go with one of their suites, there is an amazing restaurant called Plate & Vine in the hotel that serves a delicious breakfast as well. Of course, they serve lunch and dinner as well – but just in case you’re worried about breakfast (this is always a big concern for me. lol)
Possibly the best part of our room was the huge bathroom with oversized jacuzzi, double vanity, large modern shower and the list could go on and on. It’d be a great place to stay if you wanted to do a little “staycation” in the area because I could’ve been pretty content just hanging out in the room for the weekend.
Our living room was the perfect place to sit back after a long day and watch the Stanley Cup Playoffs (the Wild did pretty good while we were away!) on the flatscreen TV.
The hotel also had a beautiful outdoor heated pool, lounging area, hot tub and on the other side of the hotel was an outdoor patio with fire pit and large seating area. There was plenty of space to just sit and relax, sip some coffee and enjoy not being in snow!
Oh and I can’t forget the fitness center (with treadmills, ellipticals, free weights, etc.) and the business center for all your work necessities. We noticed the hotel had a ton of conference rooms as well for meetings or events, I’m sure they keep pretty busy with that since it’s a pretty prime location!
Visiting Concord
The Concord area, whose tagline is, “Where families come first”, was right off the freeway (680) and easy to find. You can actually take the BART all the way into San Francisco from Concord and vice versa very easily. The Hilton even has a free shuttle that will take you to and from the station if you just ask the front desk to pick you up.
After we checked into our hotel on Saturday, we took a walk over to Buffalo Wild Wings for some lunch and a drink. It was nice that a lot of things were walking distance so we could spend as much time outside in the beautiful weather as we could!
Also across from the hotel, was the Veranda Shopping Center which was an awesome outdoor mall to do some fun little shopping at. They have a lot of neat stores, and they’ll be adding an Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic and tons of others real soon too. Also in there was a Whole Foods which was perfect for us to pick up a few groceries to keep in our room for snacks or lunches. If you’re planning a trip over to the Veranda Shopping Center on your trip, make sure to check out their website and see if they have any events that day. They do a lot of fun things there!
It was an on-and-off sunny day that day too, so we decided to just hang out enjoy the pool for a bit and just take a second to take it all in. It was fun to be right amidst the mountains too and the scenery couldn’t have been more gorgeous. As the night grew on though, we had some light showers so it was time to venture out and see what we could find for dinner!
We took a little drive out to check out more of Concord and we found the Fuddruckers. We also checked out the Jungle Entertainment Center which is a really neat place for kids to run and play indoors. I was surprised at how inexpensive it was for our daughter to play here, it is only $6.95 for 1-3 year olds to play on the weekend, and there was tons for her to do including kiddie rides, things to climb on, slides, inflatables, and just tons of space to play.
Todos Santos Plaza in Concord, CA
Downtown Todos Santos Plaza was amazing and I’d definitely recommend checking that out before you leave Concord! It was such a pretty space with lots of open greens and a park, a gorgeous water fountain. All around the green space, were little coffee shops and restaurants. It was highly recommended to us to check out the Hop Grenade or EJ Phair as well, but we ran out of time to check them both out!
Leaving the area, going back into the park was a large Concord street clock, and of course the area wasn’t complete without my favorite, Starbucks! 🙂
Visiting San Francisco
The day that we went into San Francisco, we left early so we could take it all in while we were there. Having the car, we drove into downtown San Francisco and parked in one of the City of San Francisco lots by the Moscone Center. From there, we were able to walk to the historic streetcar which took us down to Pier 35 (right next to Pier 33 which has the ferry to Alcatraz Island).
We were able to visit the Aquarium there, which was a really neat thing for the kids! You can walk through a clear tunnel and the fish swim all around you. We were able to spot some octopi, Sharks, jelly fish and sea horses, among many other sea creatures. Little miss was loving every minute!
After the Aquarium, we went to Pier 39 which is kind of the center of all the fun. There, you can see the infamous seals (but boy are they smelly!!) We were able to walk from there to get our tickets for the Blue & Gold Fleet Bay Cruise Adventure which took us on a fun, fully-narrated tour with some stunning views.
We sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge, around Alcatraz Island, past Angel Island and more. It was fun to get a different view of the city from the water, which isn’t typically something you’d get to see!
Back on land at Pier 39, there were all kinds of neat little shops for souvenirs and plenty of restaurants as well to grab a bite to eat in case you’d worked up an appetite by this point! There were also fun little places for kids including arcades and even a fun two-tiered carousel, which we thought was pretty neat!
Carrying on our adventure, we moved onto the Big Bus Day Tour! This is a really cool concept for sight-seeing because the tour goes along numerous hot spots and drops you off so you can “Hop on, hop off” to see the city. You can stay as long as you want, and when you’re ready to move to the next stop, you just go back to where you hopped off, and grab the next bus.
On the Big Bus Day Tour, we seen the Painted Ladies, and received an interesting historic lesson about San Francisco along the way. Other notable stops include Washington Square, the Ferry Building, Union Square, Golden Gate Park, Civic Center, Lombard Street, Chinatown Gate, Chinatown and more… It was really fun and amazing to see all the historical landmarks. Without getting off, you could probably spend 2 hours just on the tour alone. But with stops and adventuring around the city, it could be an all day excursion. It’s all what you make it!
We stopped for dinner before leaving San Francisco at Greens Sports Bar to catch the Wild playoff hockey game. Then came across the cable cars (which my daughter was convinced were “Trolley” from Daniel Tiger, we didn’t correct her.) These were so neat to ride and we had so much fun cruising the city on them! We rode those from Hyde Tree to the end at Market Street which was pretty much right back to our car. Easy enough!
My husband was obsessed with Lombard Street (the curvy road going downhill) so of course once we made it back to the car, we just had to go and drive down it to get the full experience… Apparently they were having too many issues with people driving down that hill too fast and causing crashes so their solution was to wind the road to slow them down. Kind of neat!
Once we got back to the hotel, we all crashed pretty hard. It was a long and busy day! I felt like we had so much to do and see that we could have spent all week checking it out!
Side Notes: If you are planning on visiting Concord, plan for a couple days in itself. They also have Pixieland there which is a super cute little outdoor amusement park for kids! Admission and parking is free, you just need to purchase tickets to go on the rides.
If you’re planning a visit to San Francisco, give yourself at least 3-4 days, if not more. Definitely map out what you’d like to see and what you want to do before you get there so you have a good idea of which areas you will tackle on different days. I’d recommend spreading out the attractions a bit so that you don’t wear yourselves out! We went really hard trying to see everything and it was pretty tiring! We definitely didn’t give ourselves enough time.
Transportation
As I mentioned above, we rented a car from Thrifty via Hotwire for about $30 a day. We had gone back and forth on whether or not it would be better for us to take the BART to and from Concord, or if we would be better off driving. We did end up taking the BART around one day just to kind of see how it works and my husband would be staying a couple extra days without us so he took it downtown for work. It’s a very convenient means of transportation and you can purchase a card and reload it whenever you need to. With public transportation, you don’t have to worry about parking, tolls, gas, car seats or traffic – so that’s something to consider.
There is no toll going out of San Francisco via the Bay Bridge, only going into it. That’s something to consider. Though traffic always seemed to be pretty rough.
Another method of transit within San Francisco is the Muni, which is a train that runs many different routes throughout the city. This reminded me a lot of the Lightrail (here in Minnesota) and it would pretty much take you anywhere you needed to go within that district.
We had a lot of fun in California, it’s a state that neither my husband or I had been to so it was fun to check out all the sights together! We’re already looking forward to hopefully going back someday 🙂
Until next time,
Sarah
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