Life's a beach (when it's not foggy)
Got the weekend off to a good start on Friday night with a Chinese dinner out followed by drinks in Vesuvio, my favourite bar, with its retro décor and literary connections (it’s where Beat movement authors used to hang out). It’s been a fantastic weekend weather-wise, so I tried to get out and about as much as possible. Went for my habitual run to the beach at Crissy Field and back on Saturday morning – fortunately it wasn’t as painful as last time, as I’m a bit more back into my training now. We then headed out to the Marina district for an al fresco lunch, before wandering back along the waterfront and doing some reading on the little beach near us, which happens to have views across to the Golden Gate as well as to Alcatraz. It was idyllic – except for the wind, which kept whipping up sand and getting it everywhere – up your nose, in the cracks between the pages of your book… etc. etc. Jon continued his lazy afternoon at Caffè Sapore, while I took the BART (metro/train) to Berkeley and headed for the Au Coquelet Café, where a nice coffee and slice of blueberry torte awaited me, for my German conversation group. I hadn’t been in several months, but it’s quite fun to get together and enjoy a couple of exclusively Germanophone hours. We had an evening in (not before I’d stopped off to do a spot of clothes shopping on the way back home, as the shops are open pretty late) and sat down for a bit of a San Francisco film fest. I’ve recently watched Dirty Harry, which features lots of scenes in North Beach, and had been intrigued to spot our apartment block in a helicopter-flight scene. This time we watched Bullitt, which I’d seen before, but wanted to see again to find out how much I could recognise. The answer is, quite a lot. Although the famous car chase scene isn’t geographically accurate (one minute they’re heading along the marina and the next they’re out of the city on some perilous coast road), we were interested to see that places like Bimbo’s, a music venue visible from our balcony, were already in existence in 1968, when the film was made, and were then highly amused to see our apartment block from the back (we didn’t even realise it was built then).
Today we headed out to do a hike. There was much deliberation about whether to go north to Marin (which is more beautiful), or east to avoid the fog. We’d decided on east and were heading out over the Bay Bridge, when we realised that we could see Mount Tamalpais in Marin from there, and more importantly that it was fog-free, so we did an about-turn on Yerba Buena Island – snapping a couple of pics of San Fran from there as the views are so great – and made our way to the Golden Gate, which was completely shrouded in fog, even though it was bright and sunny on either side. We did a 7 mile hike on Mount Tam, which offered some good views north, but was mostly in woodland. We narrowly avoided stepping on a couple of snakes (admittedly rather small ones, not rattlers), but managed to evade the mountain lions again! From the car park on our return, we headed west to check out the view, which ended up being spectacular – all the way back to the city and beyond to the south and out to the Farallon Islands to the west. Having gorged ourselves on the vistas, we set off to Stinson Beach to gorge ourselves on some food.
I’d only passed through Stinson before on our way to Point Reyes, but it’s a lovely place, although very popular of course. We had a great dinner out on the terrace of Parkside Café beneath the foothills of Mount Tam, then took a stroll onto the beach itself, which is a huge crescent of fine sand backed by a tidal lagoon. It was stunning – and for once, reasonably warm. The evening fog forming a short distance off the coast only served to add to the drama. Contented, we set off back to San Fran, intending to take the spectacular Highway 1, clinging to the cliffs above the ocean, but had to turn back and opt for the not-bad-as-a-second Panoramic Highway instead, because there’d been an accident on the 1.
Today we headed out to do a hike. There was much deliberation about whether to go north to Marin (which is more beautiful), or east to avoid the fog. We’d decided on east and were heading out over the Bay Bridge, when we realised that we could see Mount Tamalpais in Marin from there, and more importantly that it was fog-free, so we did an about-turn on Yerba Buena Island – snapping a couple of pics of San Fran from there as the views are so great – and made our way to the Golden Gate, which was completely shrouded in fog, even though it was bright and sunny on either side. We did a 7 mile hike on Mount Tam, which offered some good views north, but was mostly in woodland. We narrowly avoided stepping on a couple of snakes (admittedly rather small ones, not rattlers), but managed to evade the mountain lions again! From the car park on our return, we headed west to check out the view, which ended up being spectacular – all the way back to the city and beyond to the south and out to the Farallon Islands to the west. Having gorged ourselves on the vistas, we set off to Stinson Beach to gorge ourselves on some food.
I’d only passed through Stinson before on our way to Point Reyes, but it’s a lovely place, although very popular of course. We had a great dinner out on the terrace of Parkside Café beneath the foothills of Mount Tam, then took a stroll onto the beach itself, which is a huge crescent of fine sand backed by a tidal lagoon. It was stunning – and for once, reasonably warm. The evening fog forming a short distance off the coast only served to add to the drama. Contented, we set off back to San Fran, intending to take the spectacular Highway 1, clinging to the cliffs above the ocean, but had to turn back and opt for the not-bad-as-a-second Panoramic Highway instead, because there’d been an accident on the 1.
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