My San Francisco Trip Photos, Experience, & I Got Engaged!

Some of you might remember I made a post last Thursday while boarding the plane before leaving to San Francisco. The trip was from Thursday through late Saturday and was absolutely amazing. Between seeing the up and coming U.K. singer Adele in concert, checking out the sea lions at Fisherman's Wharf, walking halfway across the Golden Gate bridge, running from bums yelling vicious things at us, etc etc - I proposed to my wonderful girlfriend. And she of course said YES! It was truly a great moment for the both of us, she was completely shocked. I've been meaning to do this for a long time, and I figured this trip would be perfect since she loves the city of San Francisco. Seems as though there is quite a trend going on here with Nokia bloggers getting married. It all started with Ricky, then Mark Guim, then Ravindra, and now myself. And I feel like I left someone out in between, maybe not. Thankfully, I had my N82 with me to capture a ton of amazing pictures during this special trip...

I don't even know where to start with the rest of this article. Here we go...

First off, I'll give you a few details of the trip. We arrived on Thursday around 1pm, got off the plane, and took the Bart (public transportation) all the way to our hotel, literally the foot of the hotel. We stayed at the Hotel Whitcomb on Market Street. Highly recommended for those looking for something decent with a good price. The public transit system in San Francisco is nothing short of perfect. For $11 per day you can get unlimited rides on the bus, cable cars, and street cars. These will get you almost anywhere you want to go in the 12 mile radius city - 24 hours a day. Not to mention the taxis really don't charge much either if you don't feel like waiting. Surprisingly we didn't eat at a lot of places, mainly because each meal was so filling so we only ate twice a day, with random snacks in between. Off the top of my head we went to Bubba Gump Shrimp, Floating Boat Sushi, Noah's Bagels, Market Street Restaurant, some India food place connected to a Kennedy's dive bar, Escape From New York Pizza, and I can't even remember the rest. We also got to see Adele in concert, and she was absolutely amazing. A very talented singer that will be well respected for years to come. She actually won a grammy last night for Best New Artist. The venue was called Warfield Theatre, which had amazing art on the ceilings, great sound, and a perfect view of the band and singer. The overall vibe of the concert was that she didn't expect such a supportive and exited crowd, she was overwhelmed. All the fans were happy to share the experience with her. Walking the Golden Gate was amazing, Haite-Ashbury streets where the hippies hangout was cool, and of course Fisherman's Wharf had some much to see and eat.

Enough about the trip - what about the tools?

Devices:

Obviously I decided to take my N82 with me. I almost opted to leave it at home and go with the E71 (larger battery) and bring a digital camera. Before I left my house I just couldn't part ways with the N82 - what if I wanted to snap some really quick pics without digging in the camera pouch? Plus, I just feel more comfortable with my trusty N82. I did however still bring along the Olympus 8mp camera, and yes it served me well. I think all in all I took an equal amount of pics with both cameras, and surprisingly the N82 had much better results in some instances especially the video recording.

Power:

I got the Proporta Mobile Travel Charger said about a month ago, and wanted to get some really good use out of it before I gave you guys the full review, which is soon to come. Let me tell you - it's a MUST-HAVE accessory for any trip. Between all the photos, video, geotagging, navigation/travel guide/maps, and keeping my work email on (just in case), the Proporta really saved my ass. If I didn't have that handy little battery charger I would have probably left the N82 at home and brought the E71 just for it's ginormous battery.

Sofware:

Google Maps was a life saver. It has the whole San Francisco public transit system laid out beautifully, and even gave me departure times and schedules. I used Nokia Maps and it's guides to get a few reviews of different places, and on a few occasions some turn by turn walking directions. All my "places of interest" that I wanted to visit were previously saved as Favorites before I left for the trip. This came in handy BIGTIME. I wanted to get some use out of Sports Tracker and Vine, but it completely slipped my mind. I'm kind of glad I didn't fiddle with those apps because they would have got in the way of the amazing time we were having. Maybe next time because it would be interesting to see our path and photos all laid out on a map.

Photos:

All of the pictures below were taken with my N82 and uploaded to Ovi. Check out the flash slideshow (not viewable in RSS readers)...



Video of Adele live in concert @ The Warfield Theatre

The quality of the video and the sound came out great. I was especially let down by the sound recordings of live music in the past, but this has left me very surprised. Maybe this was fixed in a recent firmware update? The first video has about a 1 minute intro before she begins to sing. Bear with the shaky camera at the start. Check it out...



If you liked it, here's another song.



Overall it was a great trip and we're extremely happy engaged. The wedding won't be for about a year from now so don't be waiting anxiously for another "Nokia blogger" wedding..

Needless to say San Francisco is a great city and left a good impression on my first time being there.

Not to mention every place had great local beer. Cheers!