Lucky Winner!

So I am sitting in a boring conference for work a couple of Friday mornings ago and I get a call from Nate. He tells me that his co-worker just told him about a contest that was in the paper about a free flight give-away that Allegiant was doing to Oakland, California. All you had to do was show up at the airport dressed like a "tacky tourist" and you get your name in a drawing. And if your name gets picked, you get two free tickets that day to Oakland for the weekend. Hotel included. The kicker Nate tells me is that it is at 10:45am. (It was 8:30am when he called). I immediately told him he was crazy and that our names would never get picked. All he had to say was, "Let's do something spontaneous today." (And I really wanted a good excuse to get out of my boring conference). So of course I agreed to that and met him at the house at 10:15am. I told my boss that something had come up and I would be gone for a couple of hours but more than likely would be back. Yeah right.

Luckily Nate and I just so happened to have dressed up as tacky tourists for Halloween a couple of years ago. Go figure. We were able to pull our costumes together in about 5 minutes. And we packed our bags "just in case" in about 3 minutes. Our house was a complete disaster zone and I was not excited at all to come back home to clean it.

When we got to the airport I have to admit that I was a bit embarressed by our outfits, but quickly saw that we fit right in with everyone else. There were about 60 people dressed up and Nate and I knew for sure we would be going home. We put our names in the drawing and had to wait around for about 45 minutes until the airline would draw the winning name. Nate and I started to make lunch plans together. (Heck, why go back to work so soon right?). And of course while we waited we ended up running into one of Nate's cousins at the airport and she wasn't suprised one bit that we were dressed up looking like fools.

 

 

When it was announced over the intercome that they would be drawing the winning name, Nate and I tried to hide behind all sorts of people because there were a couple of news stations taking video of the whole event. When the airport manager drew out one of the yellow slips of paper to determine the winner, I turned to Nate and said, "That is defintely not my name because that paper is folded in fourths and I only folded mine in half." Low and behold to my utter shock it was my name they announced as the winner!!  Nate and I could not believe it. The next few minutes were a blur. Nate rushed to the car to retrieve our bags and I was interviewed on camera by two local news stations. So much for only leaving work for a couple of hours. We then had about 30 minutes before the flight left. Crazy!  We had no idea what had just happened and Nate and I frantically made calls to arrange getting off of work and having our dog and house taken care of before we boarded the plane.

(This picture does not do our costumes justice. Nate had an awesome hat on earlier and a Polaroid camera around his neck. The outfits were complete with knee socks and flip flops)

When we got on the plane we just started laughing our heads off at our amazing luck! We instantly became celebrities on the flight. We wasted no time at all and started to make weekend plans on the flight. We were flying by the seat of our pants the whole trip! It was so much fun.

When we finally got to our hotel (after riding the disgusting Bart and walking a few blocks because we were lost) we bought tickets to see the Giants game.

 Our luck continued at the game that night because all the fans got free hats! 

On Saturday we got up early and walked down to the Warf. We made a stop at Lombard Street. (The crookedest street).

We then ventured over to Fisherman's Warf.

 Then we might have made one or two stops at Ghiradelli Square and I might have sampled more than my share of chocolates.

 Sadly we weren't able to get tickets into Alcatraz because they were all sold out so we went on a little boat ride under the Golden Gate Bridge and around the outside of Alcatraz.

 So close, yet so far away  from Alcatraz.

 In the afternoon we ventured up to Coit Tower.

 The view from on top of the tower.

 The weekend we were in San Francisco, one of the Piers had free admissions to all of their ships and sailboats. We had a little fun and decided to do a Titanic pose on one of them.

 Here's another cool ship we got to tour.

 On Sunday we hit up Golden Gate Park. (Yeah it's pretty huge). We explored the Botanical Gardens. They were awesome.

 A huge tree at the gardens.

 And of course we had to get our picture taken in front of the Golden Gate Bridge before we took a walk across it.

We tried to do as much as we could in the few days we were in San Francisco. We did a lot of walking and I'm pretty sure my calf muscles grew a few inches. We also ventured into China Town. All I can say is crazy.

We had such an awesome weekend!  We ate the best food, got great sunburns, and met a lot of strange people.

This is definitely a memory we will never forget!