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.
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