Our Los Angeles family told us we really must visit Lombard Avenue while in San Francisco, so we duly did. It is described as “the world’s most twisty road”. Not sure about that but it is a short, steep and very wiggly road lined with colourful flowers, including 2000 hydrangeas. Cars are continually driving up it, tourists with cameras peering out of the windows. We chose to walk down the steps at the side. It was very pretty and once again we had some lovely views of San Francisco.
After delicious meal at the Grove restaurant on 3rd Street – one of several we had there during our stay – we went to a lovely old theatre, Orpheum Theatre which features a vaulted ceiling and a beautiful façade, apparently inspired by a 12th century cathedral. There we saw a really good musical called Company which had previously been on in the West End in London. It was directed by Marianne Elliot and the acting was superb.
We took a bus to Golden Gate Park, which is enormous, we could easily have spent a day there. We walked through a beautiful rose garden and a Japanese tea garden and also visited a really interesting art gallery, the De Young museum. Most of the works were by American artists, such as Thomas Moran, who are well known in America but who we had never come across before and the themes of the paintings were interesting, many featuring scenes from the Civil War. We also went up to the top of the De Young tower where we had a great 360 degree view of San Francisco. (click on the images to enlarge)
Not far from our hotel we happened upon Blazing Saddles, a bike hire shop so we hired e-bikes and cycled along the coast to the Golden Gate Bridge stopping for a coffee along the way where we saw a heron (it’s tradition to see a heron on our bike rides). As is often the case, the bridge was covered in cloud as we rode across and it was actually quite chilly but we soon warmed up when we arrived in Sauselito on the other side. After another delicious empanada at Copita Tequileria y Comida, we cycled up the coast a bit and then inland to the Old Mill Park in Mill Valley where we saw lots of giant redwood trees and huge very expensive looking houses hiding in the sides of the hills. We then cycled back to the coast passing lots of houseboats which looked nothing like those on our canals. They were more like actual houses built on concrete slabs sitting in the sea. We put our bikes on the ferry to Fisherman’s Wharf and that evening treated ourselves to margaritas at Barrio, a restaurant on the waterfront.
Travelling around San Francisco has been easy with buses, trams and the subway. And after a few days we’ve been finding our way around. The F bus and tram leaves from near our hotel and that seems to be our ‘go to’ bus. For over 65s it’s just $1.50 for a multi-trip of up to 2 hours.
Our friend from SF said that we had to check out the Oasis bar, so Sunday evening found us there with DJ RAAG playing fantastic Bollywood style music and as you can see, the audience going wild!
During our stay in San Francisco we decided to visit Alcatraz. The audio guide was very informative. The prison on Alcatraz island was initially a military prison – those imprisoned included WW1 conscientious objectors and soldiers discovered to be gay. From 1934 to 1936 it was used as a state prison. Prisoners from other prisons were sent to Alcatraz if they had been behaving badly. There were several escape attempts but only one was successful and it is not known whether the three men who escaped together actually survived the attempt. They disappeared without trace and may well have drowned in San Francisco bay. (click on the images to enlarge).
Nature had taken over in some of the areas outside the prison and whilst waiting for the ferry we were observed by this bird.
For me, by far the most interesting aspect of Alcatraz was learning about the Indian occupation of 1969. When you arrive on the island you can see graffiti on the walls and the water tank, declaring the island to be Indian land. There is a room on the island devoted to this occupation with information around the walls and a video to watch (see below).
Here is the video (in four sections) of the Indian occupation of Alcatraz. It is well worth watching.
We took a bus to the Latino area of San Francisco, the Mission District, for one of the highlights of our visit to San Francisco, the Precita Eyes murals tour. Precita Eyes is a community based mural arts organisation which was founded in 1977. Its aim is “to enrich and transform urban environments and educate communities locally and internationally about the process and the history of public community mural art”. It offers low cost art classes for children, young people and adults, mural education workshops and seasonal community painting workshops. It also offers mural tours.
The tour we went on was led by the lovely Carmela Gaspar who was really interesting and very informative. Most of the tour took place in nearby Balmy Alley, which runs between 24th and 25th Street. Balmy Alley is a privately owned road in which all the walls and garage doors are covered in amazing murals, some painted in the 1970’s and some as recently as this year. Many of them have a political theme such as human rights, political corruption, gentrification and government injustice, and the titles are often in Spanish (click on the images to enlarge)
In addition to those in Balmy Alley there are more than sixty other murals in the Mission District. Precita Eyes have produced a map showing where they are, their titles and the names of the muralists who created them.
After feasting our eyes on these colourful, vibrant and very powerful murals we wandered through Mission, sampling some Mexican food on the way of course. We came to a bookshop called Medicina para Pesadillas – Medicine for Nightmares and saw a woman standing in the shop window holding a microphone, and a crowd standing outside. As we drew nearer, we realised that she was reading out her poems and they were being broadcast in the street! Later we also came upon various bands playing music in the street. It was a great atmosphere.
We ended the day walking to 18th Street to take a look at the amazing mural on the outside of the Women’s Building and then people watching in Dolores Park as we admired the great views over the city.
In Monterey we stayed at the Monterey County Fair RV site. The site had water, electricity and ‘sewer dump’ on the pitch and then toilets and a shower. When the fair ground has events the RV site evidently gets very full, but when we were there it just had a few other vans, some smaller, and some huge. The people who ran the site were extremely friendly and helpful. It was fairly close to the centre of town and a bus ride took about 5-10 minutes and was very cheap.
Whilst in Monterey we went out for a morning with the Monterey Bay Whale Watch. Monterey has a submarine canyon close to the shore which reaches a depth of two miles. This creates a special environment providing food for deep water species of whales, dolphins and sea birds. Evidently this unique canyon makes Monterey Bay the best place in the US to view a variety of marine animals all year long.
It was difficult to catch photos of the whales. You’d see a spout and then the whale could be seen turning in the water and going back down to feed. We saw a mother with her baby, and the guide explained that the mother gives birth further south in warmer waters. They stay in the warmer waters while the baby is feeding solely on the mother’s milk and during this time the mother has no food herself. She fasts for several months, until the baby is old enough to swim north to the bay where the mother can feed herself and wean the baby by teaching it how to catch food. The baby stays with the mother for about one year and then is mature enough to go off on its own.
Here are some photos from our trip. All the whales we saw were humpbacks but we also saw an albatross with its huge wings, brown pelicans, sea lions and seals.(click on the images to enlarge).
We hired e-bikes in Monterey and cycled along the coast, along part of the 17 mile drive, as far as Spanish Bay. There were lots of golf courses along the way – often, to our surprise, with deer grazing on them. The coast line was stunning, very rocky with white sandy beaches and crashing waves. As we set off we saw seals resting along the harbour walls and further along we aw some furry seals and their pups resting on the beach. All along the way the roadside was covered in pretty pink flowers.
On our way back we passed through Cannery Row which was given its name in honour of John Steinbeck and his novel of the same name. In the past it would have been full of sardine canning factories but now it is full of gift shops and restaurants.
While we were staying at Monterey we took the bus to Carmel, a very pretty town a little further along the coast. There are flowers everywhere, in all the public spaces and in the many perfectly tended gardens. There are also lots of “fairytale” houses which look a bit like the gingerbread house in Hansel and Gretel. They were built in the 1920’s by a man called Hugh Comstock.
We were told that Carmel-by-the-Sea, to give it is full title, is rated the Number 1 dog friendly town in America and we certainly saw a lot of dogs, clearly all pedigrees and all immaculately groomed.
As well as strolling round the town we took a walk along the beach and enjoyed the beautiful soft white sand.
Carmel Mission
A friend who grew up in San Francisco told us we should try and visit a mission while in California, so we made our way to the Carmel Mission Basilica which was founded in1771by Father Junipero Serra, who is buried there. Spain built a chain of 21 missions across the length of California each approximately a day’s horseback journey apart. The Carmel mission had a very pretty garden and two museums, one with artefacts which had belonged to a prominent Monterey family, the Munras family, the other with artefacts, furniture, documents etc from the mission itself. Extracts from Fr. Serra’s diary were on display, talking about how helpful the indigenous people who had converted to Christianity had been, but themuseum did not seem to have any critique about the impact of colonisation on native Americans.
