California Part 6 - on to San Francisco!

We had a great shopping Saturday at Fairfield - trawled through the mall over the road from our hotel (which was next to the freeway) ... sounds hideous but it was great. We did a couple of loads of washing in the guest laundry and realised we were going to have to buy another bag. Despite deliberately packing light and leaving a half empty suitcase! Clearly not light enough. We went off to Vacaville Premium Outlets to clean up on the stuff we ran out of time to get in Gilroy, then left about 3 to drive into San Francisco. Normally only an hour's drive but it took us nearly two - a combination of bad weather and the women's march closing some of the main streets in town. And over another enormous bridge - the Oakland bridge. Gulp. And then on to our Airbnb apartment in NoPa, about 4 km west of the CBD.



It's the one third from the intersection - beige with the bay windows. The one-bedroom apartment was down the bottom out the back with a window onto the garden (patch of grass) and it was excellent - so nice to stop and spread yourself out for a few days, and have a kitchen. Not that I was anywhere near sick of eating out! But three meals a day in restaurants is not good for the waistline or the wallet, so we bought some cereal and settled in. It took us an hour to get around the supermarket. Strange things everywhere.



The next day I woke up with a headache and general grumpiness (first time in the holiday, so not a bad average) and the weather was windy and cloudy and murky. We didn't really know what to do with ourselves (the pressure! San Francisco! everybody's favourite city!) but eventually we got our shoes on and just walked out the door, which is often the best way to get some perspective. We walked through San Francisco uni and admired the view.



This is me in the beanie and gloves I nearly didn't pack. I could have done with less t-shirts and more coats .... although I may have bought a fair bit of warm weather gear. So cheap! Then we walked into Golden Gate Park and walked around before having an excellent Japanese lunch. Which all made me feel much better.



The weather was really crapping out though, so we decided to go to the Museum of Modern Art for the rest of the afternoon. Lots of people had had the same idea, but it was still awesome. Really really awesome. After two hours I'd seen about a quarter of it, and loved everything. I downloaded the app which has little two-minute spiels on various things - it tracks your location so you can look at it, see what they can tell you about things in the room you're in, pick whatever interests you, and find out more. Brilliant.



I took lots of photos of artworks and things that caught my eye but the highlight was probably the pop art. Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and lots of others I'd never heard of. It is completely part of our cultural frame of reference but I had never seen lots altogether and understood where they were coming from. And got up real close to see those dots. Fascinating. There were the white canvases too, and the plain black ones. And the art work that's just a fluorescent tube. Hmmmm.



We had a great day but didn't really see San Francisco at its lovely best ... but it was only the first day there.