We started Tuesday by taking the BART (SF's subway train) into the city. From there we took a trolley (yes, the SF trolley!) to a bike rental joint. Yes! We got to have our first good look at the city from the seat of a bike!
We stopped at Ghiradelli square to check out the amazing chocolateness and then biked along the bay toward the Golden Gate bridge.
Tom and Javier noticed an Ultimate Frisbee game underway as we were going along and on a whim asked if they could join the game. The puzzled players shrugged and said "sure!" and soon were happy they had as T & J guarded each other, leaping, throwing, and catching with the rest. After ten minutes or so they felt they had sufficiently demonstrated the Wisconsin style of frisbee awesomeness and we took off again.
We stopped next at Fort Point where we not only wandered around and explored the fort itself, but also browsed an art exhibit that was created to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the bridge's construction. The story of building the bridge itself was laid out and the beautiful engineering and art that combine to form it was explained in a way that made the structure even more magnificent.
Then it was time to tackle the bridge ourselves! Dodging strollers, walkers, golf carts and faster bikers, we threaded our way across the amazing structure. It was incredibly beautiful - not only could we see the bay and the ocean, we also got a closer look at the structure of the bridge itself.
After an exhilarating ride down the hill into the heart of Sausalito, the city that faces SF across the bridge, we explored the town and eventually found a lovely restaurant on the water that served super-yummy seafood. Then it was on through Sausalito to the ferry where we had a beautiful ride through the bay back to SF.
Here we got a close-up view of Alcatraz and a from-the-water view of Golden Gate bridge. Once back on land we rode our bikes back to the rental place, boarded the city bus, and took it back to a BART station. This brought us back in nice time to meet friends for dinner back in Berkeley. And what a lovely time that was! Deanna, a college friend/former roommate of Angela's, and her friend Scott drove up to meet us as we rejoined Justin and Michelle at a favorite Indian restaurant of Michelle's and Justin's. It was a neat time of getting to know each other and catching up on the day's adventures.
Wednesday was only slightly more moderately paced. For this trip we took the car and headed straight for Golden Gate Park and the Cal Academy - a place of gardens, museums, and many kinds of good food to try.
The Cal Academy was doing a special on earthquakes, so we learned about those through their Planetarium film and an earthquake simulator, got to see heaps of amazing tropical and aquatic plants and animals, learned about their work in the Galapogos Islands, and more.
We broke up the day about halfway through to participate in a CityGuides walking tour of the Japanese Tea Garden. Our guide was interesting and knowledgeable and we all saw so much there that we wouldn't have seen if we were just browsing through on our own. Walking in the sunshine awoke a powerful hunger, so thankfully we found a (best tried yet?) Mexican restaurant called Nopalitos. Wow was it good.
After finishing (reluctantly) we headed back to the museum for further wonder-perusing until the museum closed. We had a bit of time to kill so we went to see the 49ers stadium and stopped on the way back to watch wind surfers take advantage of the afternoon's conditions.
For supper, the itinerary included meeting up with another of Angela's college friends, Alex. The plan was to meet at a favorite place of Alex's called Wasa Wasa.
The only problem was that the iPhone Maps app listed it as permanently closed. We double checked with Alex and he assured us that the restaurant was open, but we next saw that Yelp listed it as closed. Calls to the place got us no further than the answering machine. Another call to Alex, a realization that Yelp gives real-time info so the Yelp info would change as of 5pm, and further investigation of the web convinced us we would be fine. Yelp's status switched to "Open" and we headed there. We arrived early, only to find that Wasa Wasa was indeed closed - but just for the day! What?!!
We called Alex again and quickly arrived at another great destination, Kincaid's. Justin took the BART to its very furthest reaches and was able to join us as well (hooray!). More amazing food (this time, Copper River Alaskan salmon - wow, best ever!!), great conversation, and intense discussion of iPhones and Androids all contributed to a very nice wrap-up to a great game night adventure. Tom, Tammy and Javier headed off to the airport to return the car and take off back to Wisconsin - Angela stayed to enjoy the rest of the week/weekend with Alex and Deanna. Yep, it was a great time, and yep, we saw a ton of neat stuff and yep, I think we'd all go back in a heartbeat to see and experience even more of this beautiful city!
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