San Francisco - Feb 2008
Back in sunny San Francisco for a while. Weather has been fantastic. Been keeping myself busy cycling all over the city, trying to do 2 hours a day for 5 days a week! On Saturday Amanda and I cycled over the Golden Gate to Sausalito and caught the ferry back.
I usually forget to take my camera but I cycle all over the city on my own with no real sense of where I am going, which is fine for me. I make decisions as whether to turn or go straight on based on the traffic and the lights and the hills ahead.
Today i found myself climbing the highest peak in San Francisco by acident; I made the decision to climb to the top when i found myself about half the way up it already - at the top i was disappointed to find a car park and a wide road circumnavigating the Twin Peaks, typical. Still, the view was amazing with no fog and no clouds in the sky.
Panorama of San Francisco from Twin Peaks:
We have also spent a weekend in wine country, less than two hours north of SF, in the NapaValley. We hired an “economy” from a rental downtown, they did the usual “free upgrade”, expecting us to be pleased with the monster Mustang they gave us; “it is a lot of fun to drive” they said.
We drove to Calistoga and got a cheap-ish motel there. Next morning Amanda had arranged a surprise for me, turned out to be a mud bath! This is one way of getting me to do something I would not do, call it a surprise and don’t tell me until it is too late for me to back out.
After the mud-bath (which, in truth, i enjoyed rather a lot) we went for a drive, visited the Petrified Forest (three-million year old redwoods turned to stone, “discovered” in 1871 which i suspect means discovered by white-man) and on to an Old Faithful, an artificial geyser which we did not bother paying the $8 each to see. On to the mega-rich St Helena where they sell Burritos for twice what they cost in SF (bugger that!) and then to a wine tasting for $5 for 6 which seemed much more reasonable, especially since the guy serving us did not seem able to count.
Over night in Santa Rosa and a night in a very crappy motel, but it was only $60 for the room. On to The Jelly Belly factory and Berkeley Hat Co. where I bought a nice leather pork-pie/trilby/fedora type thing. Another fantastic weekend!
