San Francisco Stroll Part the Second.

After lunch, we strolled through the market and saw some interesting stores. This was Boccalone and their slogan was "Tasty Salted Pig Parts" Yum !


Chrissie bought some olive oil from this store that was lime infused and very delicious.


It was next door to the Far West Fungi and Wild Forest Products store, that had the most amazing array of mushrooms that I've seen, including blue ones, some that looked like balls of wool, fairy rings and sea beans !





Chrissie got lost in Sur la Table, either that or she was racking up some serious shopping time.


They had the Juila Childs shrine ! ;)


Robert and Chrissie then went back to the car and I kept going back past the tower on the top of the market and along the shorefront.


Past more trams ...


And looking back at the city.


Looking back at the Bay Bridge with yachts and row boats and the shipyards at Oakland Harbour.


Looking up the hill at the Coit Tower perched on Telegraph Hill.


Two photos looking back at the city from this pier.


Coit Tower is on the right.

Another couple of trams.




Including a Melbourne one !!


The button you pushing for walking isn't really a button, you just touch it with your finger and it registers.


I found Pier 29 1/2.


Tomorrow there will be more strolling, some walking and bread. Also the delights of Pier 39.

San Francisco stroll

On Saturday, Robert Chrissie and I went into San Francisco to have brunch at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market and to drop me off so I could have a stroll around San Francisco.

Map of the stroll.

We parked just near the Bay Bridge and took a couple of photos of it ...




We were walking to the Ferry Building which housed the Farmers Market.


It was amazing to see the fog roll into the bay, even though it was probably about 28 degrees and quite hot.


And I got my first real closeup look at San Francisco's downtown. Complete with bow and arrow. (Although the arrow is incorrect as it has 4 fetches. ;))


The concrete border had cute sea creatures on it.


The footpath traffic increased as we got nearer the market.


It was fascinating to look through the city buildings and see the hills with houses on them on the other side.


This part of the road was a double layer roadway before the last big earthquake and it fell over and instead of replacing it, they put the trams down the middle of the road and opened up the view. The trams apparently are from all over the world and are very big and colourful.


We finally settled on a place for brunch, mainly because they had 6 different types of oysters.


Chrissie grabbed the book and I eventually bought a copy.


They had some great photos and quotes throughout the book.


Clams, Prawns and Crabs. Yum !


Lunch ! The three dips were a mustard butter, vinaigrette with very little oil and a spicy tomato sauce. The green stuff in the centre is decorative seaweed, which I didn't try.


Oysters. The ones on the right were very subtle and creamy, the cute little middle ones were quite sweet and the others were Pacifics, which are the normal ones served in restaurants. The prawns were great, lovely and fresh and the crab was chock full of sweet meat.


The aftermath !


We then wandered back through the market and Robert and Chrissie went back to the car and went home. I strolled off in the opposite direction. More tomorrow.

Memorial Day Weekend Part 4

You may wish to read Part One, Part Two and Part Three first and come back to this.

After the Frat Houses, we rode to the gates that are in the middle of the university, not at the side as one would expect. They are called the Sather Gates and straddle Sater Road at the intersection of Eshieman Road.



Squirrel !!


This is the Hearst Memorial Mining Building. It was originally built in 1903 and had a seismic retrofit several years ago where they incorporated one metre of cushioned lateral travel !


We then rode up the hill a little way, climb some steps and I jumped the fence into the Hearst Greek Theatre, and got a cut and bruise on my leg for my troubles, but it was worth it.


The chairs for the VIP guests look very uncomfortable and hard to move if you needed more leg room. I guess they would have cushions on them.


Quite a view from the top of the stone steps, there is a sloped grass apron behind me too, for extra seating.


Had to photograph this one, McLauglin hall with the engineering dept inside !


The Doe Memorial Library with Sather Tower behind to the left and California Hall on the right.


The huge Life Sciences building, which was too big for my lens to fit it all in. It has a tower at each corner and they have the names of the life sciences on them. This side has Physiology on the left and Bacteriology on the right.


We then rolled down the hill to the water. We used this bridge to cross the freeway and it had two amazing sculpture on each end.


Looking back towards Berkeley, it's in the valley in the middle, to the right of the golden patch on the hill.


This is the fishing pier near Shorebird park from Part 3.


We then rode back to the truck, stopping for some lunch on the way. Jim then took me back to Roberts place and stopped at the local Moron temple, sorry The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, The Oakland Temple.
The view was fantastic from the carpark, looking back to San Francisco over Yerba Buena Island, with the Bay Bridge on the right and the Golden Gate Bridge behind it.


The Temple was awe inspiring.


The fountain creek feature in front of it had big chunks of marble in it that looked like chunks of ice.




And that is the end of my Memorial Day weekend. This weekend I'm planning to take the Caltrain into San Francisco and have a wander around. Ciao !

Memorial Day Weekend Part 3

You may wish to read Part One or Part Two first and come back to this. :)

After the bike ride, we cooled down, had showers and then went down to dinner in Berkeley via Grizzly Peak.

We drove through this tunnel under the ridge, past these lovely houses that were rebuilt after the recent fires and then around Fish Ranch road up to the ridge.

We stopped briefly at this lookout and I took the following photos.

Looking across Berkeley to the Golden Gate Bridge. The long pier that you can just see through the mist is the old Berkeley fishing pier which was 2 miles long at one stage and it was where the fishing boats unloaded their catch. The spit of land jutting out the left is Shorebird park, then Berkeley Yacht Harbour and the start of Cesar Chavez State Park on the far right. the grassy area behind the harbour is Eastshore State Park.


This is looking down Strawberry Canyon over Memorial Stadium at Berkeley Uni, Berkeley Uni itself towards San Francisco. The office buildings on the shore are in Emeryville with it's marina just beyond. The bridge just past it is the Bay Bridge going over Yerba Buena and Treasure Island and into San Francisco.


The tower behind is the Sutro Tower on Twin Peaks near Mt Sutro. It's in the middle of suburbia

A closer shot of Berkeley campus. with Strawberry Canyon and Memorial Stadium in the foreground.



This is the house that Jim and his now wife stayed in when they were at uni. Jim went to Sacremento to work for a couple of months and Dot had a visit from a friendly policeman to warn her that the house had been the scene of a double murder and that the killer had just been released from jail. The story was that the son had killed his parents and then fled, been caught and put in jail. They had wondered abou the stange stain on the floorboards near the bathroom door and the policeman had great delight in recreating the murders. They said to each other that they weren't scared but ended up all sleeping in the same room that night ! The policeman also mentioned that they might want to get the locks changed ....


This is the house in front, which was a nursing home when they were there and there was also rumours of strange goings on.

Wacky street sign # 57.

Jim on his bike in the background.

These are the American "Frat Houses" that you see in the movies as wild party places.

Chi Omega


Alpha Epsilon Pi


Phi Gamma Delta


Kappa Delta Rho


And finally, Kappa Gamma

All of these were photographed from one corner uphill from the main university buildings.


More tomorrow.

Memorial Day Weekend Part 2

After we dropped Robert back at his place for an afternoon nap, Jim and I drove over to his place in Berkeley and went for a bike ride.

On the way I snapped a photo of the buffers that they put at the end of concrete structures on the freeways. You have probably seen similar things on ours, large blocks of rubber and interesting cables. The Americans used oversize rubbish bins filled with water.



Jim lives here. Yes, that is his truck out the front and he has 24 solar panels on his roof.

We jumped on the bike and rode to the end of his court and down the secret pathway, ending up at this lookout. I don't have any photos as I didn't want to take my camera on a mountain bike track.

We rode up the valley to this meadow and then went along various paths and tracks to this horse jumping arena in the middle of the bush. If you are getting the impression that I had no idea where I was, then you would be right. I just followed Jim and hoped that he wouldn't get too far ahead.

It was quite a ride and if you look at the large map you can see the lookout on the left, the meadow in the bottom right corner and the horse arena right of the middle top. We then rode from the horse arena back to the meadow by another track and then went down Joaquin Miller Rd back to Jim's house.

Again, apologies for not having any photos, I would have been too worried about my camera to enjoy the ride.