SF Trip 2015 Day 2

First things first. Let's go see one of the two iconic San Francisco things. Luckily we got out early on this one because by the time we got back from walking the bridge, the parking lot was full. 

No, Elaine is not spitting off the bridge. Below the railing there is a u-shaped rail that is mostly full of pennies -- like. Wishing well. We all took a shot, and hit 50% (Joe and Dad). 

It's quite a bridge. Look it up and read about it. 

Did you know you can pano up?

My iPhone survived this selfie, mostly because I was careful to not hang the phone over the railing.   This will be our Christmas card photo. 

On the walk back to the car, Joe spotted dolphins in the water near the bridge footing. 

What would normally be an inspiring city view would be better with the afternoon sun lighting up the near side. But in the morning, what I consider a very white (buildings) city was a dull, backlit gray. 

So we headed to Sausalito. In fact, this (http://youtu.be/C60kcAzmbAU) was our theme song for the trip. Sausalito turns out to be a trendy little tourist trap. I didn't know they. But just the way the old wooden houses, some even Victorian era, are jumbled on the vertical hills above the narrow waterfront two lane. At times the houses hang over the road. We made the mistakes of turning up on side street and found it one-lane and mountain goat steep in a matter of 50 yards. Damn. How will we even turn around. I was remiss in not taking more photos, but a walking tour would have been more like a mountain climb, for which I was ill prepared. The above picture was from inside a store called "Sauxalito". Lame, I know. 

The view from the downtown Sausalito is great, but the pano detail gets lost in the blog app. Sorry. 

We lunched at a trendy $14 burger joint that filled us so much that for dinner we only had desert. Very good local Pilsner. 

The trendiness of Sausalito, not to mention highway 1 lockup caused us to run screaming back to the peace of Golden Gate Park. Actually, we tried to walk through the Muir Woods, on the north side of the bay, but were shocked to find all three parking lots full andoverflowing far down the street. It would have been a half mile walk to get back to the entrance so we bail d and headed back to town. But the drive the entrance road to park was amazing in itself. It's only five miles but the road winds around a series of tightly waving hills with a 45 degree angle of repose. 5 to 10 mph on two twisty little 10-foot lanes with coastal wind-swept trees hanging half over the roadway like a passing shred of fog. 

Back at Golden Gate alarm we entered the Botanical Garden as the afternoon faded to dusk. This is the succulent section. Sounds dirty. 

The redwood section (w stern forests) of the Botanical Garden. It was fun getting lost in a small redwood forest, not to mention the bamboo forest of the Asian section of the garden, in the middle of a huge city. 

The gardens abound with small nooks like this isolated gazebo. All fuel for Elaine's vivid Lanscape Architect imagination. 

The conservatory. Darkness fell upon us here so we headed back to the car through a bridge underpass, in which we found a small digeridoo (so?) band using the reflective acoustics of the underpass for fantastic effect. Here is a short recording I made of them warming up: http://youtu.be/Bge6i7YBuaw

After dusk we had some extra time and pulled the multi-phone lookup on a Cineplex that was playing th new Star Wars movie. We wanted to watch it before any of us ran into spoilers.

Spoiler alert -- it was a dumbed-down Disney version almost identical to the plot of the original 1976 movie that was merely a hand off vehicle for the next generation of bland merchandizing vehicles. 

SF Trip Xmas 2015 Day 1

We decided to take the kids on a trip before Joe graduates from college this spring and moves away. I'm sure there will be family trips in the future, but it will never be this easy again. We opted for San Francisco because we procrastinated too long for a Hawaii trip. Plus none of us had ever been. 

Great, we have tickets. Where are we gonna stay?  I wanted something more than a hotel so I checked out Air BNB and VRBO and found this place within three miles of Golden Gate Park. The map said it was in an area of row houses and it didn't look like one. Funny. I was reading the map wrong and the house turns out to be in Pacifica. It all turned out Ok because it was in a quiet neighborhood with beach views from every room and only a 20 minute drive in to San Francisco. Just lucky I guess. 

Here's the view from the living room. I'm testing out Nan's new selfie stick. Seems like a great way to lose an iPhone. More on that tomorrow. 

We went south on the first day to have lunch at a local crab shack (Sam's Chowder Bar in Half Moon Bay - actually it's closer to El Granada) with some great friends from days of old. We've known Andy since Nan was in high school and Amy soon after that. We had a lovely catch-up and some awesome chowder and gumbo. 

Then we walked around Pillar Point to Maverick's beach. I wonder if the name has anything to do with the movie "Top Gun". The town of Miramar is just 3 miles away. Nope. Wrong Miramar. 

We found this comfortable seat in the rocks at Maverick's. The tide was out and the waves of middling size were breaking on the rocks beyond the tidal pools. 

Long-arm family selfie, suitable for our upcoming (late) Xmas letter. 

We still had a little daylight left so we headed into Golden Gate Park. Wow! What a park!  I've always been intrigued by New York's Central Park. Someday I will visit. It turns out that Golden Gate Park is similar in size and intention. It was shocking in its size and diversity. We thought we would have to park at the ocean-side parking and walk in, but then we realized that it's about 3 miles long by a half mile wide and there are lovely, wide drives throughout with bike trails, walking paths and ample free parking everywhere. It also has a polo ground, a large, authentic, Dutch-style windmill, an art museum, a botanical garden (tomorrow), and lots of ball fields and other amenities.

 We happened to wake up Elaine just in time to see the Bison paddock. Her eyes grew large at the shock. Bison were the last thing she expected to see. Shortly after that we found the most idyllic meadow (Hellman Hollow Meadow) and beyond that a small lake (Lloyd Lake). 

Here is Elaine posing at a small portico by the lake that is all that remains of the entrance to a great railroad magnate's home after the 1906 earthquake and fire. It was moved here around a century ago.  

Here is a panoram of the lake setting. The trees in the park all remind me of landscape paintings of America from the 17th and 18th centuries. The lake itself is fed by a waterfall that tumbles from a canal that is inches from the sidewalk that follows the road up the hill. The entire park is full of water features like this, many fed from a lake atop the highest hill in the park, which must have water pumped there. Though man-made, it is still wonderful to happen upon the sounds of falling water just about everywhere in the park. 

Here we are goofing around with the pano feature. Note Joes's Picasso-esque face on the left side of the image. 

Our last walk before dusk was to the top of Strawberry Hill, which is on an island in Stowe Lake, which you can paddle around in rented row boats. From there we saw the tops of the Golden Gate Bridge, downtown (the tops of the buildings), and a couple of the hilltops of the city. 

This iconic bridge is shown in all of the videos of the park from the 1950s. It is a bit larger than I expected. The stones are all larger than a person. You can barely see Joe peaking over the top. 

See. 

We stopped at Nick's in Pacifica on the way home for some very good seafood. We parked the car here and had to wipe salt water off the Windows from spray from the breaking waves. Thence "home". 

Side story:  it's kind of awesome traveling with four phone-internet enabled adults. We got really good at finding things fast and navigating in "just-in-time" mode. Yesterday we arrived at SFO at 5pm, picked up the rental car by 5:30, and before we drove out of the parking garage we had located a really great pizza place at the foot of the hill below our rental house, ordered a half Hawaiian half meat lovers pizza for pickup in 22 minutes, which is exactly how long it would take us to drive there, which we knew because we had another phone running the google maps navigation app which shows where all of the traffic is. We easily navigated the surprisingly hilly and narrow San Francisco in the darkness because the app gives you a heads up on what lane you need to be in to make the next exit. By 6:20 we were ensconced in the viewed, sunken living room of our rental house eating awesome pizza and binge watching Big Bang Theory.