Running, parading and weird weather

A week and a half ago we were baking in 34 degree heat and I was trying to work as best I could with an ice-pack tucked down my front or balanced on my head, getting everything finished as fast as possible so that I could head home and jump in the pool to cool off. Then, just a few days later, the daytime high barely topped 12 degrees – that’s only just above fridge temperature! The weather forecasters seem to change their mind on an hourly basis and we’ve had everything from blazing sunshine to thick fog and even rain in the last ten days.

So, what have we been up to? Well, there have been a couple of ascents to skyscraper bars – firstly to the Starlight Room with my friend from work, Molly. It was fabulous after a hot Friday in the office. Secondly, we went up to the Top of the Mark with Jon and his brother and sister, who have just been to visit. I managed to get us a fabulous table, from which we could watch the sun set over the Golden Gate, whilst sipping cocktails from the “101 martinis” menu.

May is also a good month for events. A week ago we had the 12km Bay to Breakers run. This year, I didn’t bother entering officially, but still ran the distance, while Jon and siblings walked it. My time was similar to last year’s, which is good, as I was under the impression that I wasn’t as fit this year. I’m not sure the costumes were as fun as last year, but I saw more naked people (!). When we got to the end, on the shore of the Pacific, it was really foggy and cold. However, back in North Beach, we enjoyed some lovely sunshine – a textbook example of the Bay area’s microclimates.

The Sunday just gone was the day of another event: the Mission Carnaval (that’s how they spell it, it’s not me), a vibrant Latino parade in the city’s Hispanic district. We got there after the start, so I think we may have missed some of the best sights, but there was still plenty to see, and I simply love the music (must have been a samba player in a former life). We then took a stroll a few blocks back to Dolores Park, one of the warmest parts of the city, which offers views of downtown SF above tall, feathery palm trees.

We’ve also done plenty of eating. Tried a new restaurant on Russian Hill during the week. It offered upscale American cuisine, and even had Coca Cola braised pork on the menu. Well, I had to try it, and it was, in fact, delicious! Jon, James and Jessica also made it to Mama’s, the most famous breakfast place in the city, on Washington Square. We’ve never been able to get in on the weekend because there’s always a huge line outside. Saturday night was a burger night – at Mo’s, which arguably cooks the best in San Francisco. Then, with yesterday being a holiday, Jon and I went out for breakfast to Curly’s, a great old stalwart all-American greasy spoon up the road, and I also ended up having a rather healthier Thai meal with a friend after work in the edgy Tenderloin district.

There’s been drinking aplenty too – we headed for the winelands on Saturday, specifically Sonoma Valley. However, it wasn’t how I’d imagined it (lazy picnic in the sunshine on the lawns of a fabulous winery, glugging from a cool bottle), because – very oddly – it rained! Usually, the rain is long over by this time of year, and we don’t see it again until September, but it threw it down for a large part of the day, and we ended up picnicking British-style in the car! However, we still made it around three wineries, including a tour.

We took James and Jessica back to the airport on Sunday. Unfortunately – for reasons I won’t go into here – the visit wasn’t a resounding success, but I hope that they got some enjoyment out of it. I love my State-side home and get lots of pleasure from sharing it.

Monterey Peninsula

Jon was busy this weekend, working on his maths, so I went on a little trip with my friend Cassie, down to the Monterey Peninsula. This is home to a special ecosystem, that results in rich marine life, plus several species of plant unique to the area, including the Monterey cypress and Monterey pine. It’s situated about 125 miles, or just over two hours from San Francisco.

We headed over there on Saturday, and began with a visit to the Monterey Aquarium, which is pretty special and is dedicated almost exclusively to documenting the marine life within the local area. We watched transfixed as sea otters rolled and dived, bright jelly fish drifted gracefully, huge tuna and weird sunfish swam around their huge tank and an octopus fixed his suckers to the glass. We were able to touch rays and starfish, then wander out onto the deck and look over the real home to all these wonderful creatures, as the aquarium is sited right by the ocean. After a stroll around the touristy area of Cannery Row, and the consumption of a huge toffee apple, we headed off on a drive along the coast of the peninsula. Part of this took in the 17-mile Drive, a scenic but rather pricey toll road. It certainly offered some lovely views of the rugged coastline, including sights of the Lone Cypress, a 250-year-old Monterey cypress clinging to a narrow rocky outcrop, inspiration to many an artist and even poet, I believe. Several swanky homes and the famous Pebble Beach golf course are also sited along the drive.

That evening, we found downtown Monterey, a very pleasant main street with several tasteful cafés, restaurants and shops, and ate at an elegant but not especially expensive Martini bar/eatery. Many of the buildings are in Spanish style, even more so than around San Francisco.

Today we awoke to a rather murky, fog-shrouded morning. The motel’s offering of coffee and a nasty processed “pastry” was certainly not enough to tempt us to take on the day, so we drove back to the downtown area and had breakfast at a very popular café there (thanks, Lonely Planet guidebook!). We certainly felt safe, with several members of the Monterey police on the next table, complete with their guns and other assorted weaponry! It was a great place – I had a very tasty omelette, but made the mistake of ordering “grits” on the side. I confess that I didn’t really know what these were, but knew that it was some kind of American speciality. Don’t recommend them – basically semolina slop.

We drove down to Point Lobos, a short distance further down the coast. This is a small State park, with a remarkably varied, rocky coastline, and home to a huge amount of wildlife. We walked around a good chunk of the area and spotted turkey vultures, cormorants, little red-headed sandpipers (not sure if that’s the proper name), harbour seals, sealions, lots of gorgeous flowers and even sea otters! It was beautiful, even though the sky was dull. When we were looking around the little museum at Whalers’ Cove, a ranger told us that the vultures were probably waiting for baby seals to perish, which wasn’t so nice. The seals are birthing at the moment, and sadly, some don’t make it. Finally, by the end of the walk, we were just starting to warm up – the Monterey Peninsula suffers even worse than San Francisco from brisk ocean breezes and fog from the Pacific. It was just as chilly at Carmel, the town where Clint Eastwood was mayor for a while, where we stopped to take a look at the lovely white sand beach. Afterwards, we pottered around the downtown, with its many posh jewellery shops and art galleries, making friends with a pack of seven (seven!) husky dogs in the back of a big SUV. On our way back home, we cruised past the Carmel Mission, one of the oldest and loveliest mission churches in California.

Photos available (password: moocow):
http://public.fotki.com/EllenHardwick/trip-to-the-montere/

Not a very blog-worthy weekend

After such a stream of activities, we needed a quiet one, so last weekend was spent cleaning and tidying the flat, shopping, running/gym, doing homework (maths for Jon, Spanish for me) and relaxing. We did, however, go out for a mediocre Italian meal in our neighbourhood, North Beach, on Saturday, and then invited Rob – our friend from university days who works for Google and has just moved over here – for dinner on Sunday. It was good to see him again.

I had my final Spanish exam on Tuesday. Now the course is over until they restart in August. Today, I decided to try walking to work in a bid to fit more exercise in. It was great – took about the same time as public transport, afforded a good workout (some of the hills are REALLY steep!) as well as fabulous views of both the great bridges, Twin Peaks, Coit Tower, downtown, everything! You can even walk past Danielle Steele’s mansion. The fantastic thing is that you never have to do the same route twice – because the streets are laid out in a grid (in spite of the hills), there are endless options for variation. And it’s great that now I have Spanish skills I can understand the slogans on the T-shirts of Hispanic labourers (“Busco una novia che sa adapta a mis bajos instintos” = “I’m looking for a girlfriend who will adapt to my base instincts” – nice!).

So, not much of excitement to report this week. I am hooked on American Idol of course, and routing for David Cook. On that note, I’d better turn the TV on for tonight’s results!

Las Vegas & the Grand Canyon

We’ve just returned from a long weekend in Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. Las Vegas was incidental – it was the closest airport we could fly to for a reasonable price, but still lies some 280 miles from the big hole in the ground we really came to see. We only had one night in Sin City, as it’s also called, so did a whistle-stop tour of some of the immense casino-hotels that line the Strip, each more absurd or lavish than the next. We ended up having dinner in New York New York, complete with its own Statue of Liberty, Empire State and Central Park, before heading through Camelot-inspired Excalibur to Luxor, a huge black pyramid fronted by a sphinx and concrete obelisk. My first impression was one of fascination, but also distaste: it was all too artificial, too mindlessly hedonistic, too infantile, too vulgar. What were these people thinking of, sitting comatose at slot machines, feeding in an endless stream of quarters, or stumbling around drunk, winding their way between living adverts for plastic surgery on the one hand and the good folk of middle America who’d downed a few too many burgers on the other?

So, I was not really too sorry to leave Vegas behind on Saturday, as we headed out on our long trip to the Grand Canyon. The guide book had described the journey as 300 featureless miles through the desert. This didn’t turn out to be entirely true. While it was certainly a long way, and very sparsely populated, it wasn’t anything like as barren as I’d expected. In fact, there was plenty of vegetation, although the land was pretty useless for anything productive (which might explain why there were ads everywhere selling acres of it for next to nothing). We stopped for lunch at Seligman, a little town in the middle of nowhere on Route 66, at a great diner with a very authentic feel.

Our first night at the Canyon was not very eventful: we had a nice room at a quality but not especially characterful hotel, were unable to get a table at the decent restaurants, so resorted to an acceptable but bland cafeteria. We awoke early next morning, packed up what we needed for the next two days, had a decent breakfast and set off on our big hike down into the depths. We followed the South Kaibab trail, the steeper of the Canyon’s two main paths, which plunges down just short of 5,000 feet over 7 miles. The biggest surprise was how green it was – and how many gorgeous flowers were everywhere, from blossoming cactuses to spindly little blooms growing impossibly out of the red earth.

The descent was tough on the joints, but not overly so. Still, we were glad to reach the suspension bridge over the Colorado River, which would take us to our campsite. The latter turned out to be beside a rushing creek, a tributary of the Colorado, in its own miniature version of the Canyon. We pitched the tent and headed off to the beach to take some rest and soak up the rays. No chance of swimming in it, though – it was mighty cold and alarmingly fast-moving.

After a very makeshift dinner (we had to carry all our own food), we went to a ranger talk just as it was growing dark. This was followed by a highly amusing scorpion hunt. The little beasties fluoresce when ultra-violet light is shone upon them, and of course, the ranger had a special torch. They were everywhere! On the way back to the tent, whilst trying to avoid scorpions, we spotted a ringtail dart across the path, a squirrel-cum-skunk with a stripy tail and one of the more agreeable animals we’d heard about during the talk.

It wasn’t as cold as I’d feared, going to “bed”, but when I awoke at around 5 a.m., it was pretty chilly. I dozed for a bit longer, then we got up, breakfasted and decamped. It was important to make an early start, so that the hard part of the ascent wouldn’t be in the heat of the day, or so we thought! The first part of the hike back up along the Bright Angel Trail – supposedly less steep than the South Kaibab, but longer at around 9 miles – followed the Colorado River past yet more lovely plants and even sand dunes.

The ascent to Indian Garden, half way in distance, didn’t seem too bad, in spite of the heavy backpacks, and I felt some rather unjustified elation at having broken the back of it, without it having broken my back! We had a snack and watched those not hard enough to hike head down on their guided mule tour, while a friendly lizard amused us doing press-ups and the pesky squirrels tried to steal our food. Little did I know that the worst was to come: Indian Garden was, in reality, perhaps only a third of the way up in terms of elevation, and it was followed by several long, hard sets of switchbacks in the blazing heat, ascending through the different geologic layers. We had lunch a mile and a half from the top, but that last push was tough, with screaming calf muscles and burning shoulders. Still, we got lots of respect from the day-hikers and sightseers near the top, who were full of admiration for our feat. As I reached the brink of the South Rim, I finished the last drop of my three litres of water. Jon had downed four, and we’d had another “emergency” litre to hand just in case.

It was truly delicious to board the shuttle bus and get ourselves clean back at the hotel (the same one we’d stayed at before), then to head out and actually strike lucky getting a table at the Arizona Room at Bright Angel Lodge. There was a short wait, but we spent it watching the light fade over the amazing folds of the Canyon. An elderly couple from Las Vegas engaged us in conversation. Within a couple of minutes, they’d told us they didn’t like San Francisco, “because everyone’s on welfare” (!) and justified it with the explanation that they were Republicans! Not a lot you can say to that, really.

The next morning, we took the shuttle bus to some more viewpoints along the South Rim and took our leave of the awe-inspiring views. It was then back on the road for the return trek to Vegas. We’d liked the diner in Seligman so much, that we decided to stop there again, and were amused to find tumbleweed scuttling across the road ahead en masse as we left the freeway – so typical of middle-of-nowhere, just-like-the-movies America!

We decided to stop at the Hoover Dam briefly, although we didn’t get a really good look. Exiting the car was like entering a fan oven – it was nearly 100 degrees and a strong desert wind was blowing. On the one side, the dam’s not very exciting, but on the other it plunges to unfathomable depths (I didn’t manage to see the bottom from the road).

We arrived in Vegas with a good forty minutes or so to spare, so decided to take a look at another casino, namely the Bellagio (which the San Francisco-hating Republicans had recommended, amusingly enough). Expecting it to be murder to park, we were surprised and delighted that it had a free parking lot… but of course – they want to make it easy to take your money off you! Entering the Bellagio was like slipping into an oasis – its main features are a cool, beautifully cultivated atrium, a stupendous glass ceiling and other works of art bedecking its classy walls. Of course, it still had the slot machine hell, but I caught a glimpse of what Vegas could be like, at its best. To be honest, I’m still on the fence about the place, as I told my work colleagues today, as they waited with almost bated breath to hear me cast judgement. It’s seedy, tacky, disgustingly indulgent, literally built on bad habits, but at the same time fun, deliciously opulent and perhaps one of the most truly democratic places in the world - where else would you get the super-wealthy rubbing shoulders with the American equivalent of chavs, where no one looks down on you because all that rules is the mighty dollar and they’re happy to take your money off you, whoever you are?

The return flight was on time and super efficient, just like the outward one (why UK airports can’t operate like this, I don’t know). And, as ever, in spite of it being an epic trip, I was happy to return to my beloved San Franciso and even to head to work (well, almost!). It can’t be that bad when you get to commute by cable car!

Photos are available on the Fotki site: http://public.fotki.com/EllenHardwick/las-vegas--the-gran/ (password: moocow)