We woke up Thursday morning to snow - no thank you! Spring break officially started for us after school and we were eager to trade our snow for sun. We drove down to Phoenix to stay the night for our flight the next morning. We landed at SFO mid morning on Friday, picked up our rental car, and we were off! Because our flight had been delayed, we opted to grab a picnic lunch en route to Gray Whale Cove instead of a sit down lunch at a restaurant. We had no problems getting a parking spot at the trailhead and hit the trail for a short walk towards Montara Beach. The trail is 2.2 miles round trip, although we didn’t go all the way. We decided we would sit for a bit at the bench to enjoy the views and eat our lunch, then head back to spend some time at Gray Whale Cove Beach.

The Gray Whale Cove parking lot is on the opposite side of the highway from the beach, so we carefully dashed across to take in the views at the top before descending down the stairs to the beach. It’s a smaller beach, but pretty and there were only a handful of people there (including the nude sunbathers at the very end of the beach, lol). It didn’t take long for Norah to get her feet in the water and we enjoyed ourselves for about an hour and then we had to be on our way. We had a reservation for bikes with Half Moon Bay Kayak Company in Pillar Point Harbor and spent two hours riding along the California Coastal Trail south of Pillar Point Harbor and back. It was a lovely afternoon! The weather was perfect, we loved the views, and the trail was a nice ride. It was hard to believe we were in snow just the day before!

We returned our bikes, stopped for gelato in Half Moon Bay, and drove to our AirBnB in San Jose. San Jose might be an unusual destination for most on a trip to San Francisco, however we stayed two nights to spend time with our good friends Tim and Jen. Unfortunately Jen had a last minute business trip and was not able to join us (*sad face*), but we did have a great time with Tim. Friday evening we walked over to Westfield Valley Fair mall for dinner. Again, most people don’t go on vacation to eat dinner at a mall, but this is not your run of the mill mall. It’s a high end mall with eateries like Din Tai Fung instead of Chilis (plus, we figured the teen would like walking around the mall). Unfortunately we weren’t sure what time we would be eating dinner and had not made any reservations (no soup dumplings for us - the wait was close to three hours). Luckily we were able to slide into the iChina lounge for a tasty dinner and had ice cream at Salt and Straw for dessert. We were off to a good start for spring break 2022!