Nonfat sugar free vanilla latte
Trip Start
Nov 03, 2004
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59
165
Trip End
Nov 23, 2006
San Francisco,
California,
United States
Saturday, September 24, 2005
that Canada might look good again. We spent a day holed up in Santa
Maria watching 24 hour coverage of the Rita situation (in
combination with the Katrina aftermath).
Thank heavens so lessons had been learned from Katrina but the
obssession with local and state government autonomy seems to be
somewhat overdone and crippling to a properly resourced
evacuation/recovery programme. Believe it or not one of the reasons
the mayor of New Orleans did not order mass evacuations was the fear
of being sued
1 Hearst castle - its just silly
. Now the mayor of Houston is facing potential civilaction for unnecessarily causing businesses to lose money by
ordering the mandatory evacuation of a city in the path of a Force
Five hurricane! Only in America.
Tornadoes spawned by Rita are ripping across the southeast and it's
flooding as far north as Shreveport in Louisiana (where we're hoping
to stay with a globalfreeloaders couple who were our guests in
Auckland). We're now planning a loop out from Houston through New
Mexico, north Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia,
Florida, Alabama (no stops), Mississippi, Louisiana and back to
Houston - oh, the freedom of the rental car (although with the
refining towns of Lake Charles and Port Arthur hard hit by Rita it
may well not be the economy of the rental car!)
2 Hearst castle - its just sillier
.We returned to San Francisco along the scenic, coastal Highway 1 via
the fairytale castle of publishing baron William Randolph Hearst and
the magnificent Montery Aquarium.
In 1919, in collaboration with a woman architect, Hearst began
building his dream home inspired by the wonders he had seen on a
trip to Europe in the mid-1800s. It's not clear if it was ever
truly finished - certainly, as Hearst changed his mind often, parts
of it were torn down mid-construction and redesigned. Perched on a
hilltop over looking San Simeon the estate comprises the main house
and three guest houses set in Italianate piazzas. The outdoor
swimming pool is framed by a Roman colonnaded walkway. An avid
collector of antiquities the garden features Egyptian statuary and
the plant pot on the verandah of the Persian guesthouse is a Roman
sarcophagus. There was a zoo on site (barbary sheep and zebras
still roam the property). The house is decorated with 16th century
French chateau fire surrounds, 14th century Italian wooden ceilings,
Persian tile work, Rodins and tapeestries
3 Monterey Aquaruim
. The indoor pool is tiledin 23.9ct gold to give guests the feeling of diving into the
midnight sky. The whole place evokes an age of crepe de chine tea
dresses and silk satin dinner dresses, of impractical tennis attire
and long horse treks ending in siilver and crystal furnished
picnics - those were the houseparties Hearst threw, for heads of
state, film and stage actors, anyone that caught his attentiion.
Leaving a bygone world we made landfall for the night in Seaside
outside Montery. Another Chinese meal in another kichenless motel.
Another fruitless search for an internet café (everyone here has
their own computer or three so hapless travelers are left completely
without outside world contact).
4 Monterey Aquarium
Montery is a very pretty seaside town with shingle houses featuring
airy verandahs, wide bay windows and not a few turrets. Using the
huge aquarium as a catalyst they have redeveloped the fish cannery
row into an area of artists' studios, upmarket restaurants, cigar
purveyors and stuffed sea otter shops. The sea otters are by far
the cutest, fattest exhibit at the aquarium. They are all pups that
were rescued and then released back into the wild. Either because
they were overly socialised, or because restaurant quality shrimp
and salmon delivered to the door is a better deal than catching your
own, these ones kept coming back. Now they're used as foster mums
for new foundlings. The aquarium features massive tanks where
hammerhead sharks, sunfish, stingrays, eaglerays and tuna big enough
to take your leg off frolic
5 Monterey Aquarium
. The shark feeding was hilarious.Divers go into the tanks waving huge salmon steaks at the obviously
well-feed sharks. After two or three attempts to force the steak
into the shark's mouth the shark gets bored and takes the steak to
keep the handler happy. He then swims away and discreetly drops it
behind a rock. The jellyfish are blacklit and treated as kinetic
art.
San Francisco is half way between Auckland and Wellington, which
sort of makes it Taupo and that's not really fair. The houses,
built on improbable slopes, are reminiscent of the deep, narrow
fronted villas of Tinakori Road and Brooklyn. And the cable cars
clanking and rattling (although through the middle of the street).
The bustling, crowded Chinatown is Howick and the coffee-obssessed,
gallery dotted Sausolito accessed by ferry is Devonport
6 SFO - some photos you just have to take
. Thestreets running up from Union Square are a true melting pot with
Korean restaurants next to halal butchers next to tea houses, coffee
bars, burger joints, sushi bars, Vietnamese, Thai, Mexican. The
weather and smog are Auckland. The downtown ferry terminal is an
organic producers market and artesanial bakers, winemakers,
confectioners market like Moore Wilsons (but much, much bigger).
Heather was let loose to prowl the Union Square shopping district for a
marvelous, excessive, stimulating, but not particularly expensive,
four hours. David walked Nob Hill and visited the cable car museum.
We drove down the famous zig-zagging Lomard Street and negotiated
the Hispanic Mission area.
In December 1963 Martin Luther King said, "..
7 SFO MOMA
. we will not besatisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like
a mighty stream", so it is fitting that his memorial in downtown San
Francisco is a waterfall in the Yerba Buena Cultural Centre
gardens. There are beautiful urban green spaces, performance art
complexes and challenging, edgy public art projects everywhere.
There are galleries filled with Matisse, Picasso, Rivera and Pollock
in spaces more beautiful than the art, architecture not dictated by
budget and engineering projects dictated by challenge and beauty.
We waed across that particular breathtaking structure in a
breathtaking freezing wind.
This is our kind of town, if you park the Department of Homeland
Security (why does the guy who stamps your passport need a
sidearm?), gun control, Republican governors, gay marriage, capital
punishment and Iraq off to one side.
