San Francisco - Doing it her way!

Last month I took Breana up to San Francisco, just the two of us. I feel it's important to sometimes connect one on one with the family and not always do the group thing. I travel easily with Patrick, I enjoy it we are so much alike in that arena. We like to do the same things, explore in the same way and go pretty much nonstop. Breana is not the same, she loves the familiar, likes her down time and doesn't like history as much as something related to pop culture. We kind of travel in opposite ways. I feel bad because on a trip it's usually Patrick and me exploring Stonehenge and Breana just the third wheel.
I figured this trip, I would do it different. I wanted to do it her way. We stayed at the Kabuki Hotel in Japantown. It's been there a long time and was the old Miyako Hotel. The best part of the hotel is that they offer traditional Japanese rooms. They even have a family room with one room as a king bed and the second part of the room are the Japanese rooms with beds on the floor. It worked perfect for us as Breana is getting the age where she requires some privacy and I am still worried about allowing her a room all to her own.
Japantown is near Fillmore Street. We went up and down the shops on Fillmore. Breana lead and I followed. We spent hours in a vintage store called Crossroads. Breana shopped and shopped she found a Marc Jacobs jacket, a cute hoodie and a purse. She was in heaven and feel in love with Fillmore and the vintage shopping store.
We also went over to the COLAGE offices and saw the whole gang at COLAGE. Of course Breana was interested in talking about the subject of the day, the supreme court case to overturn Prop 8, she was much more interested in the sea monkeys in the bowl in the window. Fine, I will talk politics and you look at the sea monkeys.
We did spend the next day on Alcatraz. However, I didn't push. We got the headsets and Breana was interested about half the tour and then got bored half way through. Fine the tour was over at that point...I figure better half a tour with interest then no tour, or forcing her to take the whole tour and hating it! We walked back to the boat and she loved it.
We needed some down time. Going back to the room, her listening to music on her lap top. It was fine. I took a nap or watched CNN. The room was lovely so going back to it would not have been my first choice, but once I was there I didn't complain. It was even relaxing to travel with a few more breaks in the day!
We went out to eat. We tried that silly place underwater at Pier 39 - Forbes Island. It was a hoot. We explores, laughed and had a nice meal together.
The next day we spent a large part of the day at the Ferry Building. Breana loves cheese and I let her go into the Cowgirl Creamery and try it all and buy the goat cheeses she most loved. She ate chocolate and I had oysters. We took our time and when she was ready to go, we went.
We had tickets to Beach Blanket Babylon. It feel a part a little there when I denied her the box of chocolates and the show started a bit late. But once the show started it was upbeat, funny and lively and Breana forgot she was pissed off about not getting chocolates.
We went to the airport, took some pictures. Breana enjoys the camera. We flew home on Virgin America and Breana feel in love with the food ordering system and the videos.
It was fun, fun, fun and we got along great. The lesson I learned - is when you travel with tweens and teens they have their own opinions, likes and dislikes - let them lead a little and you follow!