Day 4 5/12/07 - USA

San Francisco

Highlight

• Breakfasted at a cool bakery, then a long bus ride to try to get into Golden Gate Park. No bus actually stop there, so I had to get off at the edge of the park and walk.
• Lots of Chinese doing their morning tai chi and others walking their dog.
• Did the whole East side, took 1.5 hours.
• The highlight of the park was definitely the Conservatory of Flowers and Stow Lake.
• Saw lots of squirrel up a tree.
• de Young Museum has great design and architecture. The highlight was the free docent tours every ½ hour. I went on Arts of the Americas as a private tour as I was the only one who wanted to go! Then did Leverson (cool) and African and Oceanic. Explanations posted were excellent and there were heaps of different stuff to see.
• Went to level 9 observation tower for 360 degree views around the park, including the new Academy of Sciences.
• Left reluctantly after only seeing about 1/4 of the museum, as by now I was extremely hungry and need to go to the Legion of Honour.
• The weather has taken a turn for the worst. I was greeted by cold and a very heavy fog. Caught bus #3 to the west end of the park. Saw a hazy dutch windmill and then tried to find the other windmill, but I couldn’t see anything in the fog and masses of trees.
• Gave up my hunt for the windmill and went to Ocean beach instead, but there was some oil spill so the water was covered with oil and I couldn’t go on the beach at all.
• Legion of Honour in Lincoln Park, which is virtually a golf course, not that I could see very much of the park because of the fog.
• This museum was less interesting for me as most of the stuff I’ve seen before, and much more of it around Europe. As usual, the explanations here were much better than anywhere in Europe, with the exception of perhaps Amsterdam.
• The highlight were definitely their Rodin (of The Thinker and The Kiss fame. They had quite a collection, which I hadn’t seen before. Also, their collection of surrealism books added to my SFMMA experience.
• Nearly finished the whole thing (including reading everything) when it closed. In hindsight, I should’ve spent more time at De Young.
• Did the multiple bus change and more than 1 hour of gridlock with multiple stops before finally making it mack to the hotel.
• Took the BART to Berkerly. Looked pretty much the same as SF. Went to University of Berkerly but it was so dark we couldn’t really see anything.
• We had to wait until 8:15 for the 2nd seating for dinner at Chez Panisse. Luckily, a supermarket opposite the restaurant meant we could waste some time. Got some Lindt on special and Ghirardelli for pressies, otherwise nothing of much interest.
• Chez Panisse was supposed to be in the Top 100 restaurants in the world, but I was underwhelmed. The food was good, especially dessert and the service pleasant, but there was nothing to give me that "Wow" factor. I thought it was about the same as Range.
• Another long ride back, with back pain, cold, stomach ache and extremely sleepy, not a great end to a great day.

Food

• French toast – buttered brioche bread with maple syrup ($4.25)
• Poppy seed muffin ($1.95)
• sour cream coffee pineapple cake ($2.95)
• Chez Panisse dinner:
  • …see sep sheet…