Gourmet Delights, Golden Gate Park, Movies & MOMA
Had a few good meals out just recently. On Wednesday I went for lunch with another Brit I met through Jon’s work (Emma) to a fabulous tea house place south of Market Street. You order a meal “package” (an exquisite little three course lunch) themed around a type of tea. I had Moorish – mint tea with stuffed vine leaves, halloumi kebab salad and baklava for dessert – yum! I liked it so much I went again yesterday! On Friday we went out to an Afghan restaurant with Tim, a chap who also works for Data Connection, who was over from the UK for meetings. Afghan food is a bit like Indian, but not quite as spicy and not as oily, so probably better for you. We also found a nice bar – Vesuvio (apparently where Jack Kerouac and other writers of the so-called Beat movement used to hang out).
On Saturday, Jon and I went to Golden Gate Park, a huge (3 mile long) green space in the west of the city. Within the park boundaries are several little attractions, including a Japanese tea garden, botanical garden, bison enclosure, museums and a couple of windmills. We visited the Japanese garden, which was lovely, and enjoyed some tea and fortune cookies (apparently a San Franciscan invention) there. We also walked to the ocean-front and saw the Dutch windmill and tulip garden. In the evening we went to the cinema to see a German film that had been recommended to me, “Das Leben der Anderen” (“the lives of others”). Little was I to know that it would win the Oscar for best foreign language film on Sunday! We managed to get the last two tickets, which unfortunately meant we had to sit right at the front, but I was amazed that it was a full house for a foreign film. Anyway, it was excellent – all about surveillance by the Stasi in East Germany during the seventies and eighties, and how a Stasi employee becomes involved in the life of an author he is spying on and subsequently falsifies his reports to try to help him. I would highly recommend it.
On Sunday, we picked up Susie from the airport, who has come to visit us and others she knows in the Bay Area. In the afternoon we went on a little trip across the Golden Gate Bridge to Point Bonita lighthouse and Sausalito, but the weather was nowhere near as nice as it was last time we went – rather grey and rough. In the evening, we had dinner in and watched some of the Oscars.
Yesterday was pretty dreadful weather-wise. Susie and I decided to have a museum day and went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. On balance, I’d say that it doesn’t measure up to the Tate Modern, but it had an interesting visiting exhibition on Picasso. In the evening we went out to dinner to a little Italian in the neighbourhood with Melissa, a friend of Susie’s from Stanford days. While we were there, it hailed outside, an extremely rare event in SF. Thank goodness for Susie that it’s a bit calmer today!
More photos are now available at http://public.fotki.com/EllenHardwick/ Password: moocow
On Saturday, Jon and I went to Golden Gate Park, a huge (3 mile long) green space in the west of the city. Within the park boundaries are several little attractions, including a Japanese tea garden, botanical garden, bison enclosure, museums and a couple of windmills. We visited the Japanese garden, which was lovely, and enjoyed some tea and fortune cookies (apparently a San Franciscan invention) there. We also walked to the ocean-front and saw the Dutch windmill and tulip garden. In the evening we went to the cinema to see a German film that had been recommended to me, “Das Leben der Anderen” (“the lives of others”). Little was I to know that it would win the Oscar for best foreign language film on Sunday! We managed to get the last two tickets, which unfortunately meant we had to sit right at the front, but I was amazed that it was a full house for a foreign film. Anyway, it was excellent – all about surveillance by the Stasi in East Germany during the seventies and eighties, and how a Stasi employee becomes involved in the life of an author he is spying on and subsequently falsifies his reports to try to help him. I would highly recommend it.
On Sunday, we picked up Susie from the airport, who has come to visit us and others she knows in the Bay Area. In the afternoon we went on a little trip across the Golden Gate Bridge to Point Bonita lighthouse and Sausalito, but the weather was nowhere near as nice as it was last time we went – rather grey and rough. In the evening, we had dinner in and watched some of the Oscars.
Yesterday was pretty dreadful weather-wise. Susie and I decided to have a museum day and went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. On balance, I’d say that it doesn’t measure up to the Tate Modern, but it had an interesting visiting exhibition on Picasso. In the evening we went out to dinner to a little Italian in the neighbourhood with Melissa, a friend of Susie’s from Stanford days. While we were there, it hailed outside, an extremely rare event in SF. Thank goodness for Susie that it’s a bit calmer today!
More photos are now available at http://public.fotki.com/EllenHardwick/ Password: moocow
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