Ball park review

So we are back from San Fran and the trip was awesome - what a great town. Fun, lots of stuff to do, and super easy to get around. The main idea of the trip was to take a short vacation and to knock off a couple more ball parks from the list. We picked this weekend because it was the one weekend of the year that the A's and Giants were both in town. What an easier way to catch some baseball, stay in a great town, and knock off two ball parks in one trip.

Friday and Saturday night we went to AT&T Park to see the Giants play the Diamondbacks. This ball park is nice - it is right on the bay and has some great views. We took the cable car one night and walked one night so it is very easy to get to also. Friday night we sat in the 3rd deck behind home plate - not a bad seat, good views of the whole park and not too high that you could not see anything. Saturday we sat in Levis Landing in right center field. This was a fun seat and had great views of the field - little restricting down right field line and deep center. Also, you had to walk a little way to the bathroom but awesome eats and drinks by this seat.

The stadium is first class - the ushers are nice, the food selection is good, and the beers were cold. It is a little expensive for e baseball stadium ($8 for a beer) but hey, we were in San Francisco. However, it does get pretty cold in the evening - jeans and long sleeves in the attire when the sun is down.

Sunday we attended the Oakland A's game against the Rangers. This stadium is a 30 minute train ride from SF. The Colosseum has it's own train stop so it is easy to get to and from. The stadium looks like it is still under construction and is one of those concrete structures versus some of the nice brick facade stadiums (Camden Yards, ATT). For this game we sat on the first base side between the first baseman and right fielder - about 20 rows off the field. This seat offered great views of the whole field and was plenty close enough to the action. They had a good selection of food - the super dog was huge! - and beer (local breweries, Heineken, tecate, fat tire). It is usually about 10 degrees warmer in Oakland than SF (that is what the locals say any way)

Out of the two stadiums ATT was the best and nicest but Oakland seemed more friendly and more in to baseball - ATT seemed like a place to go to be seen. Oakland seemed to have more die hard fans. It is really tough to judge though because each team is pretty bad and so they do not draw too many fans. The big food item at both stadiums was Garlic Fries - they smelled pretty darn good but too garlicky for me. Great brews in each stadium and both easy to get to. The tickets are cheaper in Oakland and the views are better in SF - there are better options for things to do around ATT than Oakland.

We now have 17 of 30 stadiums down. There are some tough ones left that will be hard to justify attending a game there (Minn, Toronto) but there are some easy ones to knock off - we are targeting LA and LA next year, Houston and TX, or NY and NY - again, two stadiums we can knock off in one trip.

I would recommend the SF trip to anyone - it was a blast!