Ride the Ducks San Francisco

This post is brought to you by Ride the Ducks San Francisco. All opinions are my own.

While my parents were recently visiting from Australia we spent much of our time out and about exploring San Francisco. Most of our sightseeing was done on foot which is one of my favourite ways to explore a city. Walking is a great way to experience a city up close and personal, plus with all of those steep hills it was a great way to burn off all that sourdough, clam chowder and Ghirardelli chocolate we'd been eating! As much as I love walking there's only so much you can see in one day when you're on foot. This is when a bus tour comes in handy. Bus tours are a great way to see a lot of the city but they're generally not all that exciting, especially for the kids. What is exciting though, is a bus tour that turns into a boat tour. Say what? 

Ride the Ducks perfectly fits the bill, no pun intended. It's a bus tour. It's a boat tour. It's noisy. It's fun. It was just what we were looking for. Ava and Lola have been asking to go on a Ride the Ducks tour for the longest time. I knew that my parents were also keen so we decided to wait until they could join us. The girls were so excited that we were finally going to "ride the duck" when Mamma and Papa came to visit.

Mamma and Papa in San Francisco

I've been a little absent on Little Hiccups for the past week and a bit. There's been good reason though. My parents are in town visiting from Australia!

It's been just over two years since their last visit. As you can imagine the girls are super excited to have Mamma and Papa here. And of course, Mamma and Papa are super excited to be spending time with us, especially little Mathilde. I'm so glad they were able to make it over to meet Mathilde while she's still so little.

While my parents are here we've been out and about playing tourist all over the Bay Area and a little further afield. I'd hoped to get lots of posts up about our adventures as they've unfolded however the combination of being out and about all day, Mathilde keeping me up at night with feeds and the two big girls being on Summer vacation has left me exhausted! My parents fly back to Australia tomorrow and I really wanted to squeeze in at least one post before they leave. So here's a look at our first day out with Mamma and Papa in town...

We started our first day out with my parents rather early with a Ride the Ducks adventure in San Francisco on the Saturday morning. I'll have an in depth post about Ride the Ducks coming soon but in the meantime here are a few of my favourite photos.

Easter Parade + a Ride the Ducks Give Away

This give away has now ended.

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Easter Sunday certainly was a fun filled day for our family. A visit from the Easter Bunny, an egg hunt, smashing confetti filled eggs and, the highlight, taking part in the Union Street Easter Parade in San Francisco.

We were very lucky to get the chance to ride in the parade with Ride the Ducks. The girls have been looking forward to it for weeks and were so excited that the big day had finally arrived. If you spend any time in San Francisco at all you'll be familiar with the Ride the Ducks boat. A boat on wheels, it makes its way through the city streets and out onto the Bay giving tourists the best of both worlds: a bus tour AND a boat tour. Plus it's a lot more fun!

We were joined on the "Duck" by a large group of families each with their own equally excited children for the parade. We were all given our own "Wacky Quacker", a duck bill shaped kazoo, and as you can imagine we pretty quickly became the noisiest group in the parade! Somehow though, despite the non-stop quacking and disco duck soundtrack Lola managed to fall asleep during the ride. This was the first time she been in the city without a stroller and all of that walking up and down hills had tired her out. Plus we did have a pretty busy Easter Sunday morning at home before the parade. And she has a habit of falling asleep in moving vehicles!

Like the other kids (both big and small) on board, Ava was pretty excited to wave to the crowd watching the parade and blow her Wacky Quacker to the music as we made our way down Union Street.

Happy Easter 2014

It's been a super busy Easter weekend here with non-stop Easter activities lined up.

In fact, we had so much going on for Easter that I'm going to break it down into three different posts - otherwise this would be one incredibly long post!

Let's start with today, Easter Sunday, and the Easter fun the girls had at home and out and about today...

Easter girls