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Brittany L. Bergman

Savoring motherhood, building marriage, and living simply

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Why San Francisco Is the Real Happiest Place on Earth

May 21 33 Comments

This is part 7 and the final post of a TBT Travel Series: A Taste of California. Check out these posts on why I picked California, how I saved money on travel, the magic of hiking in Malibu, why you shouldn’t miss the Getty Villa, the sacredness of friendship, how the mountains will wreck your plans, and what hiking Yosemite taught me about friluftsliv.

Remember how on Full House, the Tanner family was always happy? I always assumed this was just because it was a 90s sitcom, all of which were cheesy and portrayed an abnormally high quality of life. Having traveled to San Francisco, I now see that they were always happy because they lived in San Francisco, the most perfect city in the history of all American cities. (Note: Seattle is now a very, very close contender for me. But the sunshine of San Francisco is just unbeatable.)

Bay Area residents are among the happiest workers, and ABC rated San Francisco as one of America’s Top 10 healthiest, happiest cities. Why?

Forget Disney World! San Francisco is the REAL happiest place on Earth. // San Francisco highlights from www.TheNestedNomad.com

Spectacular, panoramic views of rocky coastline, sprawling city, and architectural feats.

Outstanding food.

Bike-friendliness.

Endless options for expertly brewed coffee.

And everyone has a dog!

What isn’t happy about this place?

Our friends Jon and Jessie recommended that since we’d only be in the Bay Area for one day, we should rent bikes so we could cover as much ground as we could in the Marina District. The good stuff is spread over about 5 miles, from the Golden Gate Bridge to the west to the historic Ferry Building Marketplace to the east.

There is so much more we would have loved to see of San Francisco. If we’d had more than one day, we would have visited the Mission District and Haight-Ashbury, Tartine Bakery and the wineries of Sausalito. But confined as we were to our 24-hour window, we decided to cover just the classics—the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay, sourdough bread, and Ghirardelli ice cream. 

Renting bikes was the best decision we made during the whole trip. They were pricey, and definitely a big indulgence for us, but we had budgeted for it and knew this would save our tired feet from miles of walking and allow us to see so much more in our short time.

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We rented beach-cruiser bikes from a charming little shop (San Francisco Bicycle Rentals, a fitting name) on Jefferson Street in The Cannery. Our hotel was in Russian Hill, and this place was about a mile walk in the direction we were headed anyway. Their standard daily rate is $30 per bike, including a lock, helmet, and saddlebag, but we pre-booked online and got each bike for $24. Still an indulgence but a $12-cheaper indulgence.

We rode around some less-crowded sidewalks at first, and once we got used to the wobbly feeling of the wide-set handlebars, we took off down The Embarcadero toward the Ferry Building. This part of San Francisco is incredibly bike friendly—the bike lanes are nearly as wide as the car lanes and are set off from the road by medians. These lanes even have their own traffic signals.

We arrived at the Ferry Building, and our first order of business was a stop at Blue Bottle Coffee, where each cup is an expertly hand-crafted pour over. The line for this tiny coffee bar wrapped around itself four times. It took about 15 minutes to get through the line, but once I took a sip of the piping-hot, perfectly smooth, not-a-single-trace-of-char-or-acidity coffee, I knew I would have waited at least an hour to get my hands on it. I am an unashamed coffee snob, and this is hands-down the best coffee I have ever tasted. It’s now the standard by which I judge every other cup—and more than a year later I still haven’t found one that measures up.

We picked up a mascarpone-stuffed zeppole (an Italian donut) from a sweet woman at a little table-shop and headed out to the benches to gobble up our treasures and soak up the sun and views of the Bay. Dan and I alternated bites of zeppole with sips of coffee, letting the coffee mix with the flaky dough and wash it down, unable to keep clean as the cinnamon-sugar coating stuck to our lips and chins and dusted our laps with sugary snow.

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From there we wound our way back through Fisherman’s Wharf, stopping for the famed sourdough-bread sandwiches from Boudin Bakery.

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We packed the sandwiches into our saddlebags and set off in search of a grassy knoll with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Jackpot.

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This was one of my favorite moments of the whole trip. Sitting on the soft grass and inhaling the scent of saltwater. Watching scores of people walking, running, and biking with their dogs. Enjoying bite after bite of crusty, chewy sourdough, fresh mozzarella, and garlicky pesto. Letting the breeze ruffle my hair and cause goosebumps on my skin. Looking over at Dan and saying “Can you believe this is our life today?”

We then biked over to the base of the bridge and decided to cross it. You guys, I had no idea the Golden Gate Bridge was so grand. I was prepared to be disappointed by the hype (it’s just a bridge . . . right?), but standing at the base, looking up and out over it, I was amazed by the amount of planning, talent, and sweat that must have gone into its creation. This bridge is a work of art.

It’s also very high above the water, so I had no desire to bike across it. Standing on it, just a few feet out, was enough for me. But Dan wanted to say he’d crossed it, so I caved. I just prayed the bridge wouldn’t collapse while we were on it.

Crossing the bridge was terrifying for me, but it was also exhilarating and breath taking (from the beauty and the anxiety) and absolutely worth it. The cliffs of Sausalito look like another country, what I’d imagine the coastline of Ireland to be like, and then on the other side, the sprawl of the city.

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We finished the day by rewarding ourselves with mammoth ice-cream sundaes from the original Ghirardelli’s. It’s the stuff dreams are made of, folks.

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Looking back, I wish we’d spent multiple days in San Francisco over LA, and we will undoubtedly return when we can spend a few days or a week. And next time, I absolutely will not miss Tartine Bakery’s famed croissants and tres leches cake.

Until then, San Francisco.

Do you have a favorite city, a place that captured your heart from the beginning and that you’d move to in a heartbeat? What do you love about it?

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Filed Under: Travel Tagged With: adventure, biking, California, coffee, food, fun, happiness, joy, money, San Francisco, TBT, travel, trip, vacation, wanderlust

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brittanylbergman

Brittany L. Bergman
✔️ Kamala shirt ✔️ Kamala pearls ✔️ Ka ✔️ Kamala shirt
✔️ Kamala pearls
✔️ Kamala mug 
✔️ Kamala curls

It’s a great day to witness the shattering of a glass ceiling, to embrace empathy and decency, and to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The work is only just beginning, but today, we celebrate. Congratulations, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris! 👏🏼🎉💙
What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaki What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaking, cozy, chaotic-but-strangely-quiet Christmas we had. ✨🎄✨

That’s a wrap for me on 2020—I’ll be off social media until sometime in January. May you be filled with peace and hope as we close this year but still wait for the close of this chapter in our history. 💜
I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; d I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; depression and rage; exhaustion and loneliness. But I can honestly say this is the weariest Christmas I can remember. I say that not to shine a spotlight on me, but to say that I have a feeling this might be your experience too. I’m with you.
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And so the words to my favorite Christmas hymn hit me different this year. They resonate in a place much deeper, more tender and true than ever before. I rejoice in the giggles of my meltdown-prone child. I rejoice in stolen moments alone in the dark, the room lit only by the glow of the Christmas tree. I rejoice in every video and every social media post I see of a frontline worker receiving the COVID vaccine, our ticket out of this nightmare. I rejoice in the vision that next Christmas might look more familiar than this one does. I rejoice in the hope of Christ, whose universal, creative, motherly love holds the whole universe together.
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On this Christmas Eve, I’ll leave you with this quote from Howard Thurman. I hope these words bring a slant of light to your day.
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“The symbol of Christmas—what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live. It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”
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Whatever and however you celebrate at this time of year, I’m sending you all my love and peace. 💫
I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in the nick of time.

I baked cookies with Selah without getting frustrated (first time ever?), took the kids on drive to see Christmas lights, and wrapped a bunch of gifts.

But here’s what I think did the trick, and please do steal this idea (because I stole it from someone else but have no idea who): Magical Movie Night™️.

On Saturday night, I stealthily placed a golden ticket under Selah’s pillow (which I printed from the internets and colored quickly with a yellow marker; good enough is good enough for Magical Movie Night!). We put Eamon to bed and got Selah ready for bed too, going through all the normal motions of brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, picking out a book. When we climbed into bed, I told her to look under her pillow.

She was confused when she found the ticket, and I told her it was for a Christmas movie night. “When?” she asked. “Right now!” I said. “What do you mean ‘right now’?” When it dawned on her that she was going to stay up past her bedtime to have a special movie night with Mommy and Daddy (sans Eamon), she lost her mind with excitement.

Bonus: Gramma was waiting downstairs with a bag of popcorn and Swedish Fish!

We snuggled under blankets, turned on Elf, and laughed our festive butts off. (This was her first time watching Elf, and it felt like the dawning of a new era. It’s such a big kid movie! And she loved it! Hold me. 😭)

Deck the halls, bring on Christmas, fill my mug with holly jolly goodness. 

I also acknowledge this has been a crappy year in so many ways, and I know many of you are not going to be able to access Christmas cheer this year. That’s okay. The real spirit of Christmas is light breaking through the dark, love making a way, and the beauty that can’t help seeping through the dirty, messy, horribly human moments of our lives. So you’re covered.

(And if you want to fake it ’til you make it, give Magical Movie Night a try. It’s the actual easiest.)
In which I couldn’t come up with a clever captio In which I couldn’t come up with a clever caption. There are signs of life but my brain is dead. 💀
“This is what I find most mystifying about Adven “This is what I find most mystifying about Advent: the period of waiting ultimately ends in great joy, but we can’t get to that great joy without intense, active, unbearable pain. In Advent we sense the mingling of anticipation and anxiety, excitement and disappointment, joy and pain, hope and fear.
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“On this side of history, we have the luxury of waiting with great hope, great joy, and great expectation. We know Jesus will be born, we know he will save us and redeem us, we know he will die and rise again, and we know he will set all things right one day.
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“But before Christ came, Advent was dark. It was lonely and unknown, as the Israelites waited in faith to hear from God, and all they got was… nothing. Silence.
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“Isn’t this more characteristic of the waiting we usually do? The waiting seasons of our lives are less often marked by joy and hope and more often marked by pain and fear. They are not often cozy or comforting but difficult and dark and even laborious.
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“We wait as a pregnant mother waits for her child to be born—there’s a vision of the joy to come, to be sure, but in the throes of gut-wrenching labor pains, we think we might actually die before we see that joy fulfilled. After a long season of pregnancy, when the fullness of time has arrived, the advent of labor ushers in the real period of waiting—and it is active and painful and raw.”
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// From “In the Fullness of Time,” a new blog post on @first15. There’s a link in my bio to the whole piece, with thoughts on pregnancy, Advent, and waiting well in an exceptionally hard year. 💜 Thank you so much to @first15 for publishing this post!
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Brittany L Bergman is a for-profit blog. Any company that I collaborate with is chosen by me and fits the theme and readership of my blog. At times, posts may contain affiliate links or sponsored content, which is never at any charge to you.

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