For those of you that don’t know, the Weekender is the weekend in the Fall where USC travels north to the Bay Area to play either Cal or Stanford for football. This year’s game was a little weird since it was on a Thursday night against Cal, and since Cal’s Football Stadium is under construction/remodeling, the game was at AT&T park, home to the SF Giants baseball team. Normally a ton of USC students travel to San Francisco for the weekend and go to the game, but given the circumstances, many students chose either to forgo the trip north, or just drive up on Friday and hang out in San Francisco for the weekend.
But not for me! As a bay area native, and the daughter of two loyal Cal fans, I knew I had to make it up for the game and the weekend! Against all odds, I left campus just before 2 after my BME lab class and made it to LAX in time for my 3pm flight, which after a slight delay landed in San Francisco. I made it to my parents tailgate by 5 where I got to see many neighbors, classmates of my parents at Cal, and family friends before walking to the game at 6! While my dad was certainly heartbroken by the game, I loved seeing USC take down Cal 30-9 while having a beautiful view of the San Francisco Bay!
At AT&T Park for the USC-Cal Football Game!
View of the Bay from the Game!
After a great night at home with all my favorite comfort foods (my mom loves when I come home to visit!) it was time to explore San Francisco on Friday! As you can also read on Ryan’s blog about the day in SF, we hit up many of the iconic landmarks of the city.
First up, the touristy attraction of them all—Pier 39 and the Sea Lions! At Pier 39, they have a variety of crazy shops, beautiful views of the Alcatraz, Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, and lots of barking Sea Lions!
From here we went over to Ghirardelli Square, a personal favorite as a chocoholic! Their current seasonal flavor? Pumpkin Spice! Yummmm
Ghiradelli Square
Next we drove down Lombard street—the crookedest street in the world! It has a great view of Coit Tower as you drive down, beautiful hydrangeas and is always a lot of fun to drive down (slowly and carefully!)
Lombard Street--the crookedest street!
We made our way over to Chestnut Street, which is home to many local shops and restaurants for a great lunch at Delarosa. After lunch we went over to the Golden Gate Bridge and walked along part of it—not to mention the weather was beautifully clear!
Next we drove through Golden Gate Park, making our way across the city to the top of Twin Peaks. This is hands-down one of my favorite views of the entire city because on a clear day you can see everything! I also love coming up here around Christmas time because all of downtown, Market Street, and the Bay Bridge is lit up.
Panoramic View of San Francisco from Twin Peaks
As the last stop of the day we fought traffic getting to Union Square to do some shopping, before calling it a day and heading home. After yesterday’s fun adventures in the city it was nice to spend today hanging out with my parents and younger sister who was home for Fall Break! Then tomorrow its back to Los Angeles and time to study for my two midterms coming up this week!
