While Peggy indulged in a massage this morning at the Grotto spa, I gave myself the luxury of sleeping in. But not too late as I wanted to check out our ocean view from our 3rd floor balcony. The concierge last night gave us a heads up, saying that it’d be low tide in the a.m. and the ocean would recede so far away from the beach line that we could walk out quite a ways out. And wow, was he ever correct. I never saw the ocean draw so far away from the shoreline before. It was certainly different but I think I would’ve preferred to wake up with the lap of the ocean near, slowly coaxing me awake.
Any feelings of grogginess from begrudgingly getting up at 730am quickly dissipated as we parked outside of Pier 33 to catch the 9am ferry to Alcatraz this early morn. I had tried a couple times this week to get tickets but it was always sold out. So when I found out there were only a handful of tickets for the first sailing today, I grabbed at the opportunity; waking up early, be damned.
This morning, my friend Joichi, who share my love for art and architecture, picked me up to start our day off at the Ferry Building downtown. Being that it was the weekend, there was the farmers market by the water. We grabbed a quick lunch of white corn & potato croquette, kaki-age and shishito pepper tempura skewers from Delica, a Japanese delicatessen and found ourselves a bench in the warm sun.
The weather was perfect. Everything was comfortable with the heat wave breaking yesterday and the fog that rolled in last night, having burned off.
It was Wes’ day off today and he was kind enough, not to mention a good egg, to take me around this afternoon. On my to see/to do list of things was the Beat Museum, located on 540 broadway at Columbus.
Anyone who’s been interested in Beat literature and culture can not possibly resist the allure of this Beat Museum church in North Beach. Finally! A space dedicated solely to the preservation of this cultural movement; a Beat bookstore in front and the museum behind and a floor up.
As this was Peggy’s last official day in San Francisco, it was Peggy’s choice what she would like to do today.
We rented a car and drove an hour north to Santa Rosa. That’s wine country (located past Sonoma and Napa) to most people, but for us, that meant an honest to goodness wildlife safari and The Peanuts Museum. That’s right, we visited the Charles M. Schulz Museum. There was even a Snoopy labyrinth on the grounds.
Did I mention that breakfast is my favourite meal of the day? I even heart breakfast for lunch, dinner or late night snack. Depending on my mood, sometimes I’ll jones for savoury brekkie and sometimes, I’ll crave something fruity and sweet. This means, I’m kinda an expert of good breakfasts.
So this morning, or to be honest, 1130am, we went to THE breakfast spot, called Mama’s, located on Stockton and Filbert, right across Washington Square Park in North Beach. This little corner restaurant had a line up of hipsters and hipster-y tourists outside the block and it took us about 20 minutes to get seated; not bad, considering you can wait up to 2 hrs on the weekends. It was worth the wait.
I joined my cousins Kat and Kim to go on a road trip to Sacramento this morning to meet up with my other cousins, Sandra and Juliet, and holy blazes, was it ever scorching hot!
Frankly, I don’t know how I got through today. I got sunburnt, heat exhaustion and was poked fun at as I ran from limited shade to limited shade. Heck, I even bought a fold up fan to fan myself all day.
Peggy and I hit Haight Ashbury today. “The Haight” is a neighbourhood of the long gone 60s San Francisco counter-culture: an era when hippies, drug culture psychedelia and the rock n’ roll lifestyle were the norm. This bohemian subculture still exists today as we walked down the street to see the children or perhaps, grandchildren reincarnates channeling their original hippies ascendants. There were street kids and dread-locked hippies on each and every block; many of whom had their guitars, sitars and canines as they sang and played for their daily supper, whilst wafts of nag champa drifted out of pot-friendly stores and vintage clothing shops.