San Francisco: Ferry building and Pier 39

One of the very touristy things that I absolutely had to do in San Francisco was to go visit the sea lions at Pier 39. I do not even know how long I had been waiting to visit the famous pinnipeds. I love the fact that they live in the city, that they are part of it. While planning our trip, I read Mighty girl's guide to San Francisco so we followed her advice and started the day at the Ferry building with coffee from Blue Bottle* (the boy had lemonade there, which was also pretty good). The Ferry building is quite a special place, as it is one of the historic landmarks of San Francisco:

"...designed in the Beaux Arts style in 1892, the ferry building was completed in 1898. At its opening, it was the largest project undertaken in the city up to that time. Brown designed the clock tower after the 12th-century Giralda bell tower in Seville, Spain, and the entire length of the building on both frontages is based on an arched arcade."

It used to be that San Francisco could only be entered by ferry, and thus this was the main gateway to the city. Nowadays it is full of gourmet-style little food shops (one of whose slogan is: "tasty salted pig parts") and it hosts the farmer's market (on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday). It reminded me of Covent garden, one of my favorite spots in London.

From the Ferry building we walked along the water to Pier 39 where the sea lions are. The pier has a Disneyland charm to it, with touristy and kitsch little shops and old-school signs, but if you skip through that you'll get to the lazy animals, just chilling there and enjoying the sun. There are some pretty cool whale murals there too. And I found the bike of my dreams.

*I love that Blue Bottle café was named after  Central Europe’s first coffee house to bring coffee from Turkey, The blue bottle.

The amazing story of Mary Ann Patten, who took control of the ship while nursing her husband and being  pregnant!

Berkeley: counterculture and bones at the campus.

Following the spirit of Haight-Ashbury, and knowing that: "much of the 1960s counterculture originated on college campuses", particularly at Berkeley, I knew we had to visit.

"The 1964 Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley, which had its roots in the Civil Rights Movement of the US South, was one early example. At Berkeley a group of students began to identify themselves as having interests as a class that were at odds with the interests and practices of the University and its corporate sponsors".

I also wanted to see Telegraph avenue, famous for the student activism of the 1960s and 70s, where many of the protests took place.

While we were there, of course I had to visit the Life Sciences building (the biologist in me was squealing with delight when we found it), and I was not disappointed. We say Lucy's bones (though at this point I am not sure if the skeleton was the real deal or a replica), as well as a T-Rex and a Pterodactylus. I love the fact that Lucy was named after 'Lucy in the sky with diamonds' .Those were the days!

*PS: I had read that when you walk through Berkeley, you still feel a hippie nostalgic vibe. I have to say I felt more of that at the Haight and at some other neighborhoods in San Francisco (maybe around Valencia street, or Dolores park but the vibe at those places was way more hipster than it was hippie). What we felt at Berkeley's campus was old! I remember my university days like it was yesterday, and yet, all the students, even those who were graduating, posing in their toga, looked so young. (It did not help that there were high-school kids touring the campus, they seemed to be there to make us feel as ancient as the dinosaurs). They all looked very content, not really against the system. (Except for some posters plastered along the walls). And, just like in the movies, there were stalls recruiting members for all kinds of clubs, including a Glee-like choir (they were singing too :) )

San Francisco: Haight-Ashbury

One of the reasons I had always been attracted to San Francisco is that (together with Paris, London, and dare I say, Mexico city), the city was at the heart of the counterculture movement of the late 1960's. During "the summer of love" in1967, as many as 100,000 people converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, initiating a major cultural and political shift. The so-called 'flower-children' have always fascinated me. Maybe, probably, I am idealizing but it's almost as if the youth of those days really believed in a different World. Not only that, but they were going to make it happen. Nowadays, we protest, but at the same time, we feel very, very lost. We are very good at pin-pointing what is wrong in the system, but when it comes to finding a clear path, to defining how we are going to change things, a fog seems to appear, and there is no consensus. That, and a certain cynical attitude, like the naiveté was lost, like we no longer believe things can really change, like we somehow helplessly accept this wicked world will stay as it is, no matter what we do.

Back to the Haight. This neighborhood takes its name from the junction of the two main streets Haight and Ashbury. "It is bounded by Stanyan Street and Golden Gate Park on the west, Oak Street and the Golden Gate Park Panhandle on the north, Baker Street and Buena Vista Park to the east and Frederick Street and Ashbury Heights and Cole Valley neighborhoods to the south."

The area was built in the 1890s as a middle class suburb, but by the 1960s the Haight become a host to a bohemian community that was a hotbed of anarchy. By 1967 it brought around 75,000 young people in search of love, music and drugs and it became the focus of a worldwide youth culture. Today, it continues to cater alternative lifestyles.

<< The "hippies" were suspicious of the government, rejected consumerist values, and generally opposed the Vietnam War. >>

As stated by The San Francisco Oracle*: "A new concept of celebrations beneath the human underground must emerge, become conscious, and be shared, so a revolution can be formed with a renaissance of compassion, awareness, and love, and the revelation of unity for all mankind."

<<Their culture was based primarily on music and the rejection of established society, a large and colorful thread running through the social fabric at the time featured enlightenment through discovery and personal development, trying to achieve a path for evolution onto a "higher plane" of consciousness.>>

And did you know that the band "The Doors" took their name from a poem by William Blake, "The marriage of heaven and hell", as cited by Aldous Huxley's book "The doors of perception"?

<<If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. >>

I leave you with some images of the neighborhood. I loved to be at the same spot where all of this happened, even if almost 43 years later (wow).

Anarchist collective bookstore.

San Francisco: The Street art

When we travel to a city, I always like to take a good look at street art, as every place seems to have their own cultural identity, that tends to reflect what is going on socially, politically. Of course, other times it is just fun. I love the ephemerous character of it, as, at any given moment, it could just disappear. It almost reminds me of Goethe's Faust's words to the moment:

"Stay a while, you are so beautiful"*

(It's also no secret that we are kind of in love with graffitti).  So here are a few of the gems that San Francisco has to offer.

*Faust makes an arrangement with the devil: the devil will do everything that Faust wants while he is here on earth, In exchange Faust will serve the devil in hell. Faust's arrangement is that if during the time while Mephistopheles is serving Faust, Faust is so pleased with anything the devil gives him that he wants to stay in that moment forever, he will die that very moment (in German he says: “Verweile doch, du bist so schön” – “Stay a while, you are so beautiful”. It is perhaps the most famous quotation in all German literature.) From here.

San Francisco: the walking routes

Mark and I love to walk through cities. We firmly believe it's the best way to really see a city, to get the true vibe of its neighborhoods, to get a glimpse at how the local live. One of the things that struck us in San Francisco is that you got a completely different feel in the different areas, almost as if there were lines drawn on the floor. I thought I would share the itinerary of our week in the "fog city" (which we saw completely transformed into a summer paradise, lucky us).

We stayed at an apartment in the Mission so our routes started by walking from that area or taking the BART to a more central spot.

Day 1: We walked from the Mission District (around 24th Street)  to Mission Dolores (but we arrived so early it was closed); we continued our way taking Castro street towards the north , then walked Haight street, passed Buena Vista Park, reached the Golden Gate Park, until the 'de Young Museum' (where The girl with a Pearl earring, whose home is at the Mauritsuis in Den Haag, is staying until June 2), took Fulton st, walked north via Park Presidio blvd., turned on Clement street, then continued on 25th avenue to Baker beach see the Golden Gate bridge and then went via Muni bus to Embarcadero, from where we went down to San Mateo.

Day 2: We took the BART to Embarcadero, went across to the Ferry Building, walked along the water to Fisherman's wharf, saw the mythic sea lions at pier 39, walked south on Stockton street passing Washington Square, visited the St. Peter and Paul church, continued further south through ChinaTown and the Financial District , had tea at the Sheraton Palace hotel (you know, like Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling and Sarah Bernhardt did back in the day); then took a bus to Hayes Valley, walked down Market street to Dolores Street, past Dolores park, went down to Cesar Chavez street, and from there back to the Mission.

Dolores Park

Day 3: We reached Berkeley via the BART, walked around the campus, then took the BART back to 16th Street, visited Mission Dolores, walked to Folsom Street, picked up our rental car at Mission Street, drove over the Golden Gate and a little bit further towards Wine Country (but we were so tired we didn't make it very far).

The cemetery at Mission Dolores, where a scene in Hitchcock's "Vertigo" was filmed.

Days 4 and 5: We went on an express-road trip to Yosemite National Park, then drove to Turlock (where we slept) and the next day continued to Carmel, Monterey (where I had to visit the Aquarium), and continued to Santa Cruz, Pigeon Point lighthouse and from there back to San Francisco.

On the way to Yosemite national Park

 Day 6: First thing in the morning we returned the car, from there we went back to Embarcadero, then we walked from the Ferry building up to Pier 29, turned at Lombard Street, walked on the most crooked street of the world, took Hyde street to the Aquatic Park, walked around the Marina, then took Bay Street, went down to Chestnut Street, walked through the shopping area all the way to Letterman Digital Arts (more on that later), took Lyon Street to the Palace of Fine Arts , walked to the beach at Crissy Field and Marina Blvd, then took the bus to Union Square, where we met friends and hung out at the Ferry Building,  after which we went home for stroopwafels and tea.

Day 7: We saw Mark's stepbrother, who drove us to Twin Peaks so we could admire the views of the city, then we went across the Golden Gate bridge to the Marin Headlands and Sausalito, where we had lunch (with an uncle who happened to be visiting the city at the same time). From there we went to Oakland and back to Financial District where we walked to Montgomery street and then made our way back to our apartment.

We are kind of in love with the city... it really is kind of all I imagined it would be (and more). Cities with the sea, mountains, culture and a ton of parks (like Barcelona ahem) have my heart. I think I am still having trouble processing it all, so I will leave you with this. But know that this week I will most probably be writing about it all the time, I hope I won't bore you with it.

We made it to San Francisco

We just came back from our California adventure, it was such a nice break. We feel so happy and energized (well now, actually, jet-lagged). We traveled on April 30 (and totally missed Willem-Alexander's inauguration ceremony), but, as we flew KLM, the Royal Dutch airlines, we did get special commemorating orange cake at the time of the celebration.

Because it was windy, our flight took a different, longer route and we flew over Greenland. It was quite impressive to see the polar ice sheets. And San Francisco... really such a vibrant, pretty city. Be prepared to hear everything about it on the following days. We walked pretty much everywhere, it is almost as if there were lines dividing the cities' different neighborhoods as you get a very different vibe in each of them. The financial district reminded us of London, Hayes Valley could have been somewhere in Southern France, Chinatown is huge and really, only Chinese is spoken there, so it's like a mini-trip to Asia. At the Mission district I really thought I might have been dropped on the other side of the border, in my beloved Mexico. There were taqueria's, authentic Mexican bakeries (pan dulce anyone?) and grocery shops with every Mexican product you could imagine (so our pantry was replenished with Abuelita chocolate, accordingly). Needless to say we had avocado on sourdough bread and mango for dinner and breakfast every night and morning.

 I was a total tourist, jumping up and down when I saw the Golden Gate bridge for the first time, in all its red glory, from Baker's beach. On the weekend we went on an express road trip to Yosemite National park, Turlock (where we slept and went to a movie theater and an all-American diner), Carmel, Monterey, Santa Cruz and Pigeon Point. Nature is so beautiful, and I was impressed at how much there is a culture to protect it. Even the Twin Peaks area is kept as a breeding for the Mission blue butterfly (Aricia icarioides missionensis). And there were sea-lions at Pier 39, just like in every movie. We were so happy to finally meet Lauren, Kamel  and baby Gabe, who are indeed better in real life :). I wish we lived closer to each other!

I will now proceed to read all of your stories... it was hard to keep up on the blogs I read while I was away. I'm sorry that I was a little late with replying to your lovely comments (but I read them all, and now they have all been answered to). I hope you have a great weekend, full of adventures, or rest, as needed :) .