California Dreaming
janeandsimple is putting me to shame. She's much better at this whole travel blog thing than I am, in that I mean she has actually provided people with details and pictures of our trip to San Francisco. And I'm supposed to be the journalist! So here we go:
Flying over the mountains on the second half of our flight into San Francisco.
On the first day, we got into town around 5 p.m. local time. We'd been up and traveling forever, so all we had energy for was finding some food and crashing at the hostel.
First stop was Golden Gate Park. It's huge. It has it's own shuttle bus to get around. We went to the DeYoung Museum (also in the park) to check out the ancient art collection, followed by jasmine tea and cookies in the Japanese Tea Garden.
Louisa looking serene in the Japanese Tea Garden.
Since we'd got our CityPasses already (something I seriously recommend, they are so worth the money) we had a week's worth of public transit to take advantage of, so we took the train to Ocean Beach. San Francisco's Muni has these really neat subways where they convert into streetcars when above ground, with a Transformer-like process that involves switching wires and raising and lowering steps. By the way, sitting on an ocean beach in late september, especially one where cacti and palm trees grow nearby, is very gratifying.
Ocean Beach
I think Louisa liked the beach (she says she'd never seen one of the ocean variety before) but I think she thinks those of us who voluntarily swim in the ocean are CRAAAA-ZY. (San Francisco Bay is famously cold.)
I've determined I want to move to San Francisco and live in a house by the beach. I've even got one picked out.
There's alot of murals and really well done street art in San Francisco.
I enjoyed the fact that one of the first murals I looked at up close had a very appropriate "welcome of San Francisco" theme going on.
Flying over the mountains on the second half of our flight into San Francisco.
On the first day, we got into town around 5 p.m. local time. We'd been up and traveling forever, so all we had energy for was finding some food and crashing at the hostel.
First stop was Golden Gate Park. It's huge. It has it's own shuttle bus to get around. We went to the DeYoung Museum (also in the park) to check out the ancient art collection, followed by jasmine tea and cookies in the Japanese Tea Garden.
Louisa looking serene in the Japanese Tea Garden.
Since we'd got our CityPasses already (something I seriously recommend, they are so worth the money) we had a week's worth of public transit to take advantage of, so we took the train to Ocean Beach. San Francisco's Muni has these really neat subways where they convert into streetcars when above ground, with a Transformer-like process that involves switching wires and raising and lowering steps. By the way, sitting on an ocean beach in late september, especially one where cacti and palm trees grow nearby, is very gratifying.
Ocean Beach
I think Louisa liked the beach (she says she'd never seen one of the ocean variety before) but I think she thinks those of us who voluntarily swim in the ocean are CRAAAA-ZY. (San Francisco Bay is famously cold.)
I've determined I want to move to San Francisco and live in a house by the beach. I've even got one picked out.
There's alot of murals and really well done street art in San Francisco.
I enjoyed the fact that one of the first murals I looked at up close had a very appropriate "welcome of San Francisco" theme going on.