July 31, 2008: San Francisco

While in theory, getting up at 3:00 am to catch a 7:00 am flight sounds practical and sound (at least to me), the reality is that Sarah and I were dead on our feet by dinnertime. But we managed to pack a lot in on our first day - once you add in the time difference, we were checked in and wandering the streets of San Francisco by 9:30 am local time.

I'll forgo my usual "I hate flying and Air Canada in particular" rant, except for: $25 for an extra piece of luggage? $7 for a sandwich? $3 for a little mini bag of Reeses Pieces? (And my personal favorite...) $2 for a pillow?! The only thing that was free was the coffee, and that managed to reach new levels of crappiness. Okay, I'll stop now.

I made Sarah stop in Union Square so I could inhale a recovery latte, and then we headed off to Golden Gate park. It's an absolutely beautiful stretch of parkland that runs from centre of town all the way to the ocean; the park is home to the San Francisco Botanical Gardens and Strybing Arboretum, the California Academy of Sciences (closed for renovations), and the de Young Museum.

We totally lucked out at the de Young. They're currently hosting a large Dale Chihuly exhibition. Sarah and I are huge fans of his glass works and the de Young had some of his best pieces on display. You can see the de Young entrance in the pic above - the museum houses one of the best art collections in San Francisco and was founded in 1895. In 1989, it was pretty much flattened by an earthquake; after a complete re-design, it opened again in 2005. It's got a kind of post-apocalyptic Road Warrior look going for it - very dramatic. One of Chihuly's pieces (the tall yellow thing in the pic) is located in a lily pond by the entrance doors.

The exhibition itself was stunning. A few comments from Sarah: "It's incredible - glass is the perfect medium for playing with really intense, luminous colours. I like the way he uses shapes and forms from nature to inspire his work. And the panel copy was excellent - really insightful commentary on his background and inspirations. Wish the AGO would get it." I took A LOT of photos. (If you'd like to see more, go to my flickr page.) Just so you get a sense of scale, in the photo on the right, the rowboat holding the glass pieces is about 3 metres long.

We had a lovely lunch in the de Young cafeteria, which, as so many American museum cafeterias do, puts the OSC's to shame. It was all VERY California-esque: signs explained how the catering company didn't use endangered or high mercury-level fish, vegetables had to be locally sourced and they didn't use beef or cheeses unless absolutely necessary (to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions and grain consumption). I was kind of wondering what that actually left to eat, but the salads were very yummy :)

After lunch, we toured the Japanese Tea Garden (right next to the de Young), which was designed for the Midwinter Fair in 1894. You can have tea in a small tea house and then walk through the ornate and beautifully maintained grounds.

It was at this point that we got the bright idea to catch one of the double-decker buses that zoom through the park every 30 minutes. We'd bought a 2-day "hop-on, hop-off" pass, which covers most of San Francisco. The weather was really nice, so it seemed like a good idea to grab seats up top - the views were great, but it was so windy, we both looked like we'd been undergoing wind tunnel experiments by the end. I did manage to get my first (somewhat blurry) shot of the Golden Gate bridge however, which we plan to visit again today.