This weekend in S.F...

We had a nice weekend. Saturday was an absolutely beautiful day - in fact, we've been so lucky to have nearly perfect weather since we have arrived. I guess San Francisco is welcoming us. Everyone and their mother was outside on Saturday. Neil had to spend the day in his studio, so I took off on my own for the day.

I am always on the lookout for free activities and although there was a Blues Festival going on at Fort Mason, which is a block from our house, it cost $40. So I instead decided to ride my bike halfway across the city to Golden Gate Park, where the California Academy of Sciences was re-opening after finishing the construction on their new building. It was supposed to be free admission to the museum, plus some festivities going on in celebration of the re-opening. The new building is SO cool - it's like the largest "green" project in the country now. The roof is covered in native plants and looks very cool. That "hill" in the distance in the picture is actually the roof. And the inside looks like it is going to be super-cool as well. Great exhibits. So it seemed worth a trip over to check it out for free, eh?

The bike ride over was uneventful - I'm happy to report that I stayed on my bike - but there was a beautiful view of the GG bridge with the fog sort of "draped" over it.

Golden Gate park was packed to the gills - everyone had noticed that there was free admission to the museum and everyone was trying to make their way there. So it was prime opportunity for a bike wreck of some kind and I'm proud to say that I made it through with no incidents. So the SF bike coalition provides ---

Oops - we now interrupt for this terribly exciting announcement - I am at work right now and just got my first delivery from spud.com!! YAY! You might be wondering what in the heck that is? Well, I will tell you. Patience, grasshopper. Spud.com is an online organic produce delivery system. You sign up for a "fresh harvest" box, decide how often you want it delivered (I picked every two weeks for now), how much you want to spend (I picked $30) and then you set preferences for which fruits and vegetables you like and which ones you don't. Then, every two weeks, spud.com "creates" your fresh harvest box for you, based on these preferences.

You can review it and if you don't like something that they have picked for you, you can change the order however you want. Or if you need extra veggies that week, you can add to the box. Once you are set, then they deliver the box to your door - or in this case to my office, because my apartment is secure and they can't get to my door. So, I just got my first box and the stuff looks awesome!! I'm so excited. If you read my last post, you noticed that there was a separate grocery stop for fresh produce. THIS ELIMINATES THAT STOP!!! And the stuff looks really great - the organization tries to buy locally and organically when possible and so I feel like I'm doing good for the earth and the local farmer as well! I'll have to take a picture when I get home and post it. It's like having the farmer's market delivered to my door. AND - if you are a first time customer, you get a $25 discount spread over you first four deliveries. This service is available in Portland if anyone is interested... www.spud.com. I think it is awesome!

Okay - back to our originally scheduled programming - where was I? Oh yeah, the SF bike coalition provides valet bike parking at a lot of the events in town, so I just handed my bike over to them and didn't have to worry about carrying around my bike lock or anything. So when I got to the front of the museum, I heard a guy say that they had handed out 20,000 tickets earlier in the day and all tickets were now gone. I obviously did not have a ticket, so was SOL for entry into the museum. Bummer... But then I noticed that the lines were MILES long to get in. So even if I had a ticket, I would have been standing in line for the remainder of the day.

Not fun. So I kind of wandered around and looked at the booths, and then decided to head off and just enjoy golden gate park. On the way back to my bike, I took a little side path that was really gorgeous. And there was a little pond covered in green algae and the ducks were eating the algae.

It was the funniest thing I've ever seen. So - here's a treat for your eyes and ears - my first video posting to the blog.





I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Stow Lake in GG park, which is a really pretty little lake with an island in the middle called Strawberry Hill. You can rent paddleboats and go out on the lake. And I checked out the Japanese Tea Garden and the Conservatory of Flowers. JFK drive is the main thoroughfare through the park and they had it all closed off to traffic, so I got to just cruise down the middle of the street without worrying about cars and pedestrians. It was really nice.

When I got home, I took my blanket across the street to Fort Mason and sat outside the Blues Festival and listened for awhile. It's not quite the same as being inside and watching the concert, but I could hear just fine. Then Neil came home and we walked down to North Beach to a little Mexican restaurant for dinner. It was a nice day...

Sunday, we attended the Fort Mason big book sale - which is a HUGE warehouse filled to the brim with old library books and Sunday was $1 day, so we spent a lot of time combing through the stacks and found some good stuff. I found an awesome cookbook and Neil found the whole collection of James Herriot books. If you don't know James Herriot, you should check his stuff out. The books are older, but just really wonderful, heartwarming stories. He was a veterinarian in Yorkshire and his books are all about his adventures in being a country vet. They are just great. Highly, Highly recommended. So I ended up spending $14 - you do the math to see how many books that is! :)

Then we headed to Kara's Cupcakes and had a little treat. Unfortunately they don't take debit cards if you have an order under $10, so our $5 cupcakes became $10 cupcakes and coffee. Oh well - you've just got to splurge every once and awhile. Then we went for a long walk along Crissy Field. Unfortunately, it was longer than we intended. We didn't realize how far from the apartment we had walked. And the beautiful sunny weather had disappeared. Oh well.

All in all, it was a really nice weekend and I got a chance to relax a little bit and see some of the city. Next weekend, I am going to take a walking tour of a neighborhood, and then I will have really interesting stuff to post!