I left my heart in San Francisco

We depart San Francisco for Sydney at around 10:35 PM at night. My son has been to San Francisco but he was only fourteen months old. My daughter has never been before. Thus, knowing we don’t leave SF until late at night I knew I wanted to show them the city. I also wanted to ease us into the monster time change that would occur. So by heading out a day early we could also sleep in the next day and wear the kids out with sightseeing.

The plan is for me and the kids to fly out to SF the day before we head to Sydney. My husband will join us later that night. The kids and I are actually flying to SF from Minneapolis as my daughter is attending sleep away camp in MN right before our trip. So we arrive around 2 PM on a Friday and we head out to Sydney the next night. 

My husband and I were married in San Francisco. I actually cannot wait to show the kids where we were married and where we stayed when we got married. I love that city so much and I can’t wait to share my love of the city with the kids. I would move there in a heartbeat if I could.

I also plan to take the kids to Alcatraz on Friday. On Saturday my son wants to visit Lombard Street and both kids want to see redwood trees. We will also walk across the Golden Gate Bridge and possibly visit the Golden Gate park. I am just as excited about showing the kids one of my favorite cities in the world as I am about our adventure to the South Pacific.

I have been to SF many, many times. But amazingly enough I have never actually ridden a cable car. Perhaps we will finally ride a cable car?

Also – I was researching transportation in San Fran. We don’t need a car the first day we are there. But the second day we most likely need a car as we want to do Lombard Street, the Golden Gate bride, Marin Headlands, and Muir Woods. Taxis and Uber would be too complex. I was comparing renting a car in San Fran city and returning to SFO (airport) between Budget and Hertz. Budget it is only $55 for a one day rental. Hertz though was over $300! Amazing what happens when you comparison shop. 

Keeping Track of it All

How have I been keeping track of everything for our trip? I created a binder.  The binder starts with our itinerary on the first page, and behind that page is our travel insurance policy.

 I debated organizing it in date order but ultimately I decided to organize by category. I have five different categories: Flights, Apartments, Hotels, Cars, and Activities. As soon as I make a reservation I print it out and stick it in the binder. This has worked great at keeping me organized. When our flights to and from the South Pacific were cancelled I could easily grab our original flight info when I was speaking with a customer service agent. If something changes I print out the new item and keep the original behind it.

As you can see, right now I am using clear plastic sheets for everything. This lets me change things if needed. Right before our trip I plan to take everything out of the sleeves, make copies, and then get everything bound at a copy store. I plan to keep a copy at home for the memories, and obviously bring one on our trip. However after we do an activity or take a flight I plan to rip that part out of the notebook. By the end of the trip I should have nothing.

I am also using the binder to put local area information. I may need to make another section for that…for example this weekend I printed out local maps of the Mossman Gorge area.

The binder also helps me with my excitement for the trip. There is just something fun about printing something and filing it in the binder.