Catchup: San Francisco!
Before San Diego ComicCon, David and I flew into Oakland instead of directly to southern California. It saved us each a couple hundred on the airfare, and it meant we could drive down to SD along with Maggie. Also, it meant I could visit San Francisco for my first time! Sadly my friend Seth, who also lives there, was off visiting our old Boston friends simultaneous to my being in California, but while Maggie did some work during the day, David took me into the city to walk around a bit and see stuff.
We took the BART into town from and walked around a bit. We went in the Metreon, which was really lame despite being famous. I guess it must have been popular when it first opened because, hey, crazy new mall with weird hip stores in it. But then since the stores were all weird, I'm guessing nobody bought anything and now the whole building is almost entirely empty. It was literally the last day of business for the Games Workshop store. (Yes, a store entirely devoted to stuff from the company that makes Warhammer miniature wargames.) The Sony store which I thought of as being the flagship of the mall was also really lame. They didn't have anything special there, really... it was just a game store, except there was only Sony stuff there, and it had a bunch of stations to play games at, but big deal? At least they sold PaRappa the Rapper hats. That was sort of neat, I guess.
So Metreon sucked, but I did like the plaza area outside it. Here's a picture of the nearby buildings from there:
We also went to a nice little toy, game, and comic book store near there. It was a little pricey, but it was a neat independent joint with a nice selection of stuff. Just the fact that they had a (decent) comic book section in a toy store was cool enough.
Anyway, we then walked a ways down to the shore and checked out the Ferry Building. The marketplace inside reminded me a bit of Faneuil Hall in Boston, but not quite as cool. From that general area there was a nice view of the Bay Bridge, so I took some pictures there:
I think David took a zoomed-in cars-on-the-bridge picture almost exactly like that on one of his earlier trips to SF.
Finally, we took a trolley up to the higher-numbered piers to where there was tourist trap stuff. Here I saw my first wild sea lions! They are apparently a big attraction, but David hadn't mentioned them. There was a big crowd of people there watching.
There was a pup among them who I caught interacting with his/her mom.
Also from here was a nice view of Alcatraz:
And, it was pretty foggy out on the bay, but the Golden Gate Bridge was dimly visible. I managed to bring it out pretty well by playing with the levels in my photos, though:
And here's just a nice picture of a sailboat out on the choppy water...
(EDIT: Oh, I just realized you can just barely make out the Bay Bridge in the distance back there behind the boat...)
I can't claim to have really gotten any sort of feel for the city in just a few hours of walking around in one tiny portion of it, but it was a nice time, at least. Perhaps I'll go back for a real visit some day.
My next post will be about visiting Pixar!
We took the BART into town from and walked around a bit. We went in the Metreon, which was really lame despite being famous. I guess it must have been popular when it first opened because, hey, crazy new mall with weird hip stores in it. But then since the stores were all weird, I'm guessing nobody bought anything and now the whole building is almost entirely empty. It was literally the last day of business for the Games Workshop store. (Yes, a store entirely devoted to stuff from the company that makes Warhammer miniature wargames.) The Sony store which I thought of as being the flagship of the mall was also really lame. They didn't have anything special there, really... it was just a game store, except there was only Sony stuff there, and it had a bunch of stations to play games at, but big deal? At least they sold PaRappa the Rapper hats. That was sort of neat, I guess.
So Metreon sucked, but I did like the plaza area outside it. Here's a picture of the nearby buildings from there:
We also went to a nice little toy, game, and comic book store near there. It was a little pricey, but it was a neat independent joint with a nice selection of stuff. Just the fact that they had a (decent) comic book section in a toy store was cool enough.
Anyway, we then walked a ways down to the shore and checked out the Ferry Building. The marketplace inside reminded me a bit of Faneuil Hall in Boston, but not quite as cool. From that general area there was a nice view of the Bay Bridge, so I took some pictures there:
I think David took a zoomed-in cars-on-the-bridge picture almost exactly like that on one of his earlier trips to SF.
Finally, we took a trolley up to the higher-numbered piers to where there was tourist trap stuff. Here I saw my first wild sea lions! They are apparently a big attraction, but David hadn't mentioned them. There was a big crowd of people there watching.
There was a pup among them who I caught interacting with his/her mom.
Also from here was a nice view of Alcatraz:
And, it was pretty foggy out on the bay, but the Golden Gate Bridge was dimly visible. I managed to bring it out pretty well by playing with the levels in my photos, though:
And here's just a nice picture of a sailboat out on the choppy water...
(EDIT: Oh, I just realized you can just barely make out the Bay Bridge in the distance back there behind the boat...)
I can't claim to have really gotten any sort of feel for the city in just a few hours of walking around in one tiny portion of it, but it was a nice time, at least. Perhaps I'll go back for a real visit some day.
My next post will be about visiting Pixar!