take a selfie, win a prize!

so on the way home from our fantastic road trip (which i'm still trying to finish recapping!), i heard from my friends at mcdonald's about a fun contest they're hosting with coke, shazam, and the late late show with james corden.  did you catch his drive around the white house doing carpool karaoke with our fabulous first lady?  it was so much fun to watch.

the grand prize is a VIP trip to the late late show with james corden - that includes airfare, hotel and transportation, plus credit with stub hub for 1 concert a month for a whole year.  they're also giving away weekly prizes of $250 stub hub credit.  not too shabby, eh?

there's a couple of ways to enter the contest, and they're both pretty easy.  you can hit up your local mcdonald's, grab a medium-sized coke in the specially marked cup that looks like this:

take a selfie of you singing into that "microphone," and post it on twitter or instagram using #SipShareWin AND #sweepstakes.  kind of like this:

if you don't want to share it, you can just upload the photo at the official website for the contest.  there's also more details plus official contest rules listed there, if you're so inclined.

the other way to enter is a little more fun, but i'm too chicken for it.  if you don't already have the shazam app on your phone, download it - it's free! - and then use the app to scan the microphone on your mcdonald's coke cup.  choose one of the songs on the list and record a quick video of yourself karaoke-ing the hell out of it and submit it.  you're done!  i'm not personally going this route because - well, if you've ever heard me sing you'll get it.

now, i'm a little late in the game because i was gone and didn't realize this was going on.  the contest started a little while ago and there isn't much time left to enter - you have till august 1st to post your photo or video online to win.  i, however, have some other fun prizes that mcdonald's was nice enough to send my way to give out to you guys.

see that t-shirt i'm wearing?  and the sunglasses?  i would love to send some of those out to you, and if you're in soCA, i'll toss in a couple of coupons for a free mcdonald's taste crafted burger or chicken sandwich.

if you want to win, post your photo entry on twitter or instagram and link back to this post along with the hashtags i listed above, then comment on this post with your twitter or instagram handle.  i'll send a t-shirt and sunglasses to the first 6 commenters, and then i have 3 more pairs of sunglasses.  and remember, if you're local to me in southern california, let me know and i'll send you those free sandwich coupons too.  i've actually got quite a few pairs of coupons to give out, so post and comment away!

and hey...if you happen to win that grand prize, i know someone who would LOVE to be your plus-one for the trip.  heh.

finding our zen

the next morning after we dropped off the bean at camp, the old lady and i decided to check out the starbucks located inside the presidio.  it was just down the street from the walt disney museum, in the digital arts building that i later found out does work for lucasfilm and other lucas subsidiaries.

the "father of cinema."  i think i read somewhere that he was a professional photographer and was one of the first dudes who created motion pictures.

with coffee in hand, we headed off to golden gate park so that we could take advantage of a free admission day at the japanese tea garden.  i'd found a website with a bunch of "insider tips" for exploring san francisco, and this was on the list of things to do.

there were lots of other folks there doing the same thing including a ton of asian tourists, locals out for a stroll, and a group of kids about the bean's age toting sketch pads and pencils.  it was a very pretty park to walk through.

we took a peek at the menu for the tea house, but weren't too impressed and moved on.  not to mention that there were a ton of people crowded in there and we didn't want to have to fight for a spot to sit.

there was a small gift shop too, with all sorts of fun things to look at and a whole rack of japanese snacks.

we wandered through the whole park, which didn't actually take very long.

these guys were hard at work maintaining the grounds.

i think our favorite part was the zen garden:

and i liked reading all of the plaques that explained what things were.

the next thing on our list was to check out twin peaks, two hills right in the center of san francisco about 925 feet up.  i wanted to check out the view, and it wasn't very far away nor was it difficult to get to.

we parked the car, crossed the street and then climbed up these rather rickety-looking stairs to get to the top.

i wanted to head over and climb the other hill, but the old lady wasn't having it.  oh, well.

and then as we made our way back into the city, i spied something fun in the rearview mirror.

i really love doing all the touristy things.  so much fun!

checking out our surroundings

while her sister and i were spending our days bonding and sightseeing, the bean was loving every minute of animation camp.  she was pretty tight-lipped about what they were doing in there due to the showcase that would be on the last day.  they were working on a project that they'd get to show off, and she didn't want to give away any details.

all those long hours of being inside a building and not having the chance to burn off a lot of energy resulted in this as soon as we picked her up, though:

she loved doing cartwheels on those huge lawns in front of the museum.  and it made for a fun picture with the golden gate bridge in the background.  looking back, i realize that we should have headed over to the bridge right after this.  it ended up being the only day we could've gotten a good selfie without it being completely fogged over.  oh well.

we were excited to head over to fisherman's wharf and check out the hotel that the hub had booked for us.  it was just a couple of miles away from the presidio, and it turned out to be in a really great area:

our room was just perfect.  we had plenty of space, two comfy beds to spread out on, a fridge for the bean's lunches, a nice sized bathroom to share.  it was pretty fantastic.

our view was of the courtyard for the cannery shopping center, overlooking jack's cannery bar.  we never did make it into that area, even though it was right next door.

we decided to head out and take a walk along the wharf to see what our options were for dinner.  what we found was that there were a whole bunch of chain-type places, souvenir shops and other tourist trap-y joints.  and with the old lady not really a seafood fan, eating at the embarcadero wasn't the greatest choice.  not to mention, we've been to a majority of the restaurants there and found that most of them were super pricey and not all that great.  so we headed back in the opposite direction to see what we could find at ghirardelli square.

there was a 50s diner upstairs that looked okay, with a pretty typical menu offering something for everyone.  the staff wasn't particularly attentive, and we waited for a few minutes before we got seated.  except that they decided to place us at a table that was really meant for two people, and then chose to seat another party of two who ended up practically sitting on top of us.  despite the fact that there were lots of other tables to seat us, they refused to find another place for us other than on the patio outside.  at first, we opted to move...but then we realized that there was no one else out there, which meant that we were going to get really, really shitty service.  and so we bailed.

downstairs, we found this:

and with a few other kids seated inside, we decided to go for it.  somehow, we were again seated in very close proximity to another couple.  i spotted another booth that was available, and when i approached the hostess to ask if we could move there, she said that she had just seated two tables in that server's station and that service might be a little slow.  faced with no other options, three growling bellies and no rush to go anywhere else, we moved.  and it was totally okay - our server came right over to greet us and offer drinks, and we sat back to relax and enjoy a leisurely dinner.

the bean often opts out of the slim pickins on the kids' menu nowadays, and the regular menu was pretty kid-friendly anyway.

she was pretty excited for her fried chicken sliders:

i went for the pork belly sliders:

and the old lady was pretty satisfied with her brisket reuben.

plus, they served tots!  who doesn't love a bowl full of crispy tater tots??

even on a tuesday evening, the line for ice cream at the ghirardelli shop went out the door.  but the bean had noticed something during our earlier walk along the wharf - a ben & jerry's store literally next door to our hotel.  she was more than happy to grab a scoop of phish food and take it back to our room to enjoy before starting her evening routine and getting settled in for the night.

later, after everyone was all comfy and tucked into bed, i peeked at my phone to see how many steps i'd taken that day and found this:

we were doing a ton of eating during this trip, but this was my average daily activity.  all that sightseeing and walking and shopping and stuff adds up.  you know what that means, right?

oh yeah.  EAT ALL THE THINGS.