San Francisco is one of my favorite cities.  I visited a couple of years ago with some girlfriends and fell in love.  When Andy told me he had to go there for a business trip I took full advantage of the opportunity to make another visit!  We are on the plane now.  I love traveling, and even love flying, until I am on the airplane and realize there are four more hours to sit in this tiny little seat.  I’m such a head bobber when I sleep, it probably looks pretty silly.

I was a bit of a procrastinator for this trip.  I didn’t finish packing until about 11PM last night.   Ever since I went to Peru for a month with one back pack I am convinced I am the best packer in the world – but it’s a little different when you want to try to look somewhat good on your trip.  I also at some point along the road decided that it was pretty uncool to check your bag if you don’t have to (think this came from my days of “backpacking” in Europe).  So when I started packing last night I thought it would take me about 10 minutes to decide on everything and fit it all in my carry on….wrong.  It took about an hour – still not too shabby right?  Here’s what I ended up with:

Packing List (for one duffel bag carry on and one Northface backpack)

Clothes

2 pairs of shorts (one dressy, one casual)

2 dresses (one day dress, one nicer one for night time)

1 pair of jeans (apparently it’s supposed to be pretty chilly at night)

2 nice tank tops

2 cardigans / 1 stylish zip up

Leather cropped jacked

5 tank tops (a mix of bed/day time)

2 pairs of bedtime bottoms (shorts and sweatpants)

1 running outfit

2 pairs of flat sandals

1 pair of wedges

1 pair of flat boots

1 pair of running shoes

15 pairs of underwear and 1 bra (yes, I get carried away with the underwear)

Toiletries/Girl Stuff

Makeup (I don’t bring much)

Contacts

Q-Tips

Toothbrush/toothpaste

Mini brush, blow-dryer, straightener (we are staying in an apartment so couldn’t count on hotel extras)

3 pairs of earrings / Alex & Ani Bracelets

Mini body lotion / face lotion / body wash / body spray / deodorant (will have to get shampoo/conditioner there)

Electronics/Miscellaneous

Lap Top / charger

i-Phone / charger

Cannon Rebel DSLR camera and case

Book

Alright, now that I just wrote all of that out…I’m pretty damn impressed that I fit all of it in to 2 bags and didn’t have to check anything.  Okay, I’m a great packer 🙂

 

Planning / Itinerary

So I’m not one to plan an hour by hour itinerary.  I think you have to be flexible while traveling and seeing a new place.  Things might come up that you didn’t even know you wanted to do or you might decide you don’t want to do something you thought you might.   I pretty much come up with an outline in my head of places/areas I want to see.

For San Fran we definitely wanted to do a Napa tour, following the IfOnly tips, I decided that a sunset cruise on the bay would be awesome, and Andy had the request to watch football on Sunday.  So basically those are our three set itinerary items.  Everything else we want to do / see pretty much revolves around eating and drinking so Yelp I went.  I bookmarked about 20 different places that I either had suggestions from people or that just had good reviews.  I am not sure if this will help with my restaurant/bar indecisiveness or make it worse once we are there.  We will just have to see!