We set out for a bike ride with my friend from work and her friends. There were about 8 of us and the plan was to bike from SF, over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito, and then to Tiburon. It's a pretty popular ride over to Sausalito but we wanted to make it Tiburon because one of our favorite cafes on the water is there. We planned to take the ferry back to SF. We were told the ride was pretty flat by the people at the bike shop and that there was only one short steep climb but we'd be fine. Turns out we were in for a much harder, longer ride than expected! We biked over the bridge and then climbed into Sausalito. The road into Sausalito was pretty hairy because the road didn't have a shoulder or bike lane coming into town. Then after going through Sausalito on our way to Tiburon and just as we were leaving town I realized I had a flat tire..ug! I am at this point using Karl's 8th grade Mountain Bike because my good road bike is in storage in Austin.
..pretending everything is ok on GG bridge
This was about 8 miles into the ride and luckily we brought our pump with us. We then had to pump up the tire every 2 miles the rest of the ride. Ug. We encountered much harder climbs and more of them than we expected and it turned out to be a pretty long ride. The constant stopping made it a little longer too. Overall, it was a very pretty ride all along the bay. At the end, we looked at my bike computer and it said 20 miles! Yow! And, it took us 3 hours! We were very relieved when we finally got to the restaurant and sat down and had a beer! Luckily, we didn't have to bike the whole way back! The ferry was PACKED with other bikers and we barely made it on. The weather this weekend was awesome and everyone else had the same idea as us! It was cool to us that just a short ferry ride across the bay and we were sitting at a restaurant patio on the water and it was HOT! The second the ferry pulled up to SF we felt the cooler breeze. We had a great time and we proud of ourselves being able to do that long of a ride without having ridden in so long. Sausalito and Tiburon are really cute little beach towns right on the water with awesome views, especially looking across the bay to the SF city skyline.
The water is perfectly clear and they have these great sandy beaches you can just walk right into the water from. After our hike we drove to another beach a little more south and it was a happening place We saw some wakeboarders in shortie wetsuits and some kids being pulled on tubes. They had a swimming area buoyed off for swimmers and kayakers. We were overall very impressed with how nice 
We stayed there two nights and had a blast seeing all of our Dartmouth friends. The wedding reception took place in a castle in the countryside, with a moat and all! The guests had to cross a small drwabridge to get into the castle. It was so beautiful! Sunday we left for Amsterdam for 2 days and one night. We enjoyed the Anne Frank house, the Van Gough muesuem, and the canals of Amsterdam. They had a floating flower market with all the recently cut tulips that was neat. 
The next day we left in the evening for Paris. We took a 4 hour train ride and arrived at midnight. After some stumbling around on cobblestone paths and pulling our luggage around we finally found out hotel. We stayed in the cool Latin Quarter area of town and loved it! There were tons of outdoor cafes, restaurants and bars all around. It was a very busseling part of town and we were glad to have chosen that area. Mark met us in Paris for our last two days there and we all had a great time walking around the city, sightseeing. 
