Chihuly and Sonoma

On Saturday, I headed off to the city to do some exploring. My first destination, however, were two different places that I had found on craigslist in the Panhandle/Haight-Ashbury/Hayes Valley area. The first was on the third floor of an old victorian, where I would be sharing a kitchen and bathroom with a medical student. However, the rent was slightly ridiculous for the area, and it did not include utilities, nor did the utilities include internet access (honestly, that should be a given at this point). The second place was a four bedroom, two bathroom apartment with a kitchen and living room, and happens to be where I'm living right now. The other occupants are a 25 year old business consultant (graduated Wash U in '06), a 24 year old IT professional looking to go back to grad school, and a 22 year old nurse. It's awesome, just what I was looking for. Utilities include internet! And cable! Good for watching presidential debate. They also have a small grill out back on a patio, so I will be taking advantage of that when I can pick up some charcoal.

Afterwards, I walked to the nearby Golden Gate Park to visit the Conservatory of Flowers and the De Young Museum. The Conservatory is small, but it's a very beautiful building, inside and out. Lots of very cool flowers inside, but my favorites were definitely the hanging, carnivorous pitcher plants. There were a bunch of different rooms each representing different worldwide climates, as well as a special "butterfly exhibit" where there were a ton of kids trying to grab butterflies out of midair (probably killing them in the process, never content to just look ... *sigh*).

Anyways, following the flowers, I headed over to the De Young Museum which was on it's last weekend of a Chihuly exhibit (it was so popular that they decided to extend the exhibit an extra month, an average of 30,000 people each day on the weekends). I had previously seen Chihuly at the Milwaukee Art Museum (side note: take a look at the museum if you haven't already seen it, really cool architecture), so I was very excited as he does really amazing things with glass. The exhibit was quite extensive. Some of my favorites were his "baskets," which are based on American Indian woven baskets -- his way of capturing these in glass often seems to defy gravity. Unfortunately, I didn't get a good photo of these at the museum, so I'm blatantly taking an image from his website to show you:

Some other pictures for ya:

After the Chihuly exhibit, I headed north blindly, as I did not really have a destination in mind. I crossed Clement Street in the Richmond district and enjoyed the few shops I passed, so I decided to walk east down the remainder of the street. Very cool neighborhood. The entire street is lined with coffee shops, little asian restaurants, food markets, meat markets, bookstores, pizza places, etc. I walked through one book store that I really liked called Green Apple Books (Clement and 6th Avenue). Lots of random, reviewed books lined the small aisles between stacks in this two story store.

I continued down Clement and turned north, proceeding to walk along the Presidio east towards downtown. I eventually realized that there was no way that I would make it to the ferry terminal at the Embarcadero by 7:15 by walking, so I hailed a taxi and began moving a bit faster towards my destination. Unfortunately, I hit a bunch of traffic on the way, got out of the cab a bit early and sprinted towards the ferry. Naturally, when I got to the terminal, the ferry was still there but the gate was closed. A nice guy on at the gate let me through, but they wouldn't let me on the boat. Great. (Note: earlier that day, my ferry into the city left 30 minutes late, making me late for seeing the first apartment, so I was not happy with them). But, since there was no point in yelling at anyone, I left to some bus terminal and after looking at a bunch of confusing maps on the wall, I managed to get onto a bus (the 80?) that took me to a couple blocks away from the Larkspur on Lucky Drive. Walked home and got back around 11. Quite a night.

The next day was Mr. McKenzie's birthday, and they were nice enough to take me up to Sonoma with them. We stopped by two different vineyards, Chateau St. Jean (very pretty, Italian/French feel) and Landmark Winery (smaller, owned by the John Deer of tractor fame family). At the latter we enjoyed lunch and a few small glasses of wine, and soon after we were out for a hike at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park (hence the lack of real wine drinking drinking). The McKenzies and I headed up the trail to Bald Mountain (~2700 feet, very pretty oak forests):

A view of Napa Valley from the top (you could also see Sonoma, Mount Diablo, Mount Tam, and if it was really clear, you could see SF):

So that was that day. Awesome little tour of Sonoma plus a hike. On the downside, I did get poison oak on my ankles, which still itches two weeks later. And sushi for dinner was good, but you only realize how nice it is to have a car when (a) you're not on a college campus and (b) you're not in a city where restaurants are close by. Good five mile bike ride each way and a very messy plastic box of sushi afterwards.