I posted some panoramas of the Golden Gate Bridge in the summer, but I never got around to posting these as well.
Me at the Golden Gate Bridge
Patti and I at the Golden Gate Bridge
Nov 212009
Nov 212009
Midsummer, Patti and I visited the San Francisco Bay area. We had a great time. I’ve been a bit delinquent in posting photos, but better late than never.
We drove up US 1 from Monterey to San Francisco and caught the sunset.
The next day, we drove up to Muir Woods, a national park just over the Golden Gate Bridge.
Parts of the woods were filled with spiders; others had no wildlife whatsoever.
As we walked through the woods, we heard a knocking sound. After searching around, Patti saw this woodpecker. When we got back to the entry of the park, we used the books there to identify it as a Hairy Woodpecker.
Muir Woods is a vacation spot for ladybugs. These two were having a grand old time.
There was a sign less than five feed away stating, “Don’t feed the chipmunks.”
I used my Google phone as a GPS to map our trip with the MyTracks application. I forgot to start the app when we started our hike, we really started where the track ends.
View Muir Woods in a larger map
Oct 082009
A couple of weeks ago I went to San Francisco for vacation. I posted a few photos from my cell phone, but I also took my hefty, large camera. Well, not so hefty and not so large, but small enough to fit in my pocket.
We start out our vacation by walking over to Fisherman’s Wharf. Sea lions are all around the wharf, but a ton of them congregate at Pier 39. They are a lot of fun to watch, but they smell quite bad.
You can see Alcatraz from Fisherman’s Wharf. We saw neither Sean Connery nor Nicholas Cage.
After seeing the Sea Lions, my friend Patti and I walked up a long staircase to Coit Tower. Patti held the tower up.
We were visiting San Francisco to see my friends Barbara and Raj get married. It was a fun wedding in Monterey, California. Congratulations Barbara and Raj!
[More photos to come later….]
Sep 292009
I’m on vacation this week, and we drove up to Marin County yesterday–the view of the Golden Gate Bridge is spectacular.
You can also pan about this panorama of the Golden Gate Bridge at Gigapan.
[Administatrivia: this is my 500th post.]
Sep 282009
I’m in San Francisco now on vacation. I was last here a few months ago for work. The day I left, I dashed over to Lombard Street, the most twisty street in the Bay Area. While I took a taxi to Lombard Street from the hotel downtown, I walked back over two or three very large hills.
From the top of one of the hills, I was able to see Alcatraz in the distance.
Sep 252009
Sep 242009
Sea lions battle for dock space in San Francisco.
Mar 072009
I returned from San Francisco last week. I’ve been to the Bay Area almost four of the past eight weeks; I’m getting to know my new coworkers at Google. While Google is based in Mountain View, I prefer to stay in San Francisco. It’s reminiscent of home.
One of the places I ate in San Francisco the first time I visited this year was Incanto, Chris Cosentino‘s shrine to offal meats. My friends and I had a fine time at his Noe Valley restaurant. This past visit I stopped by Boccalone, Cosentino’s meat shop in the San Francisco Ferry Building. I purchased a brown sugar and fennel salame. While I had some of it in San Francisco, I brought the rest of it to my friend Phil and Karen’s house. (Happy Birthday Karen!) The salame is chewy and has a strong fennel flavor. The sugar helps balance the strong flavors of the cure and fennel.
Today, I was reading Chris Cosentino’s blog post about receiving a letter from anti-foie gras folks. He and his business partner, Mark Pastore, discussed the letter, and Mark wrote a thoughtful note on the foie gras debate on the Incanto web site. It’s well written, and I agree with the gist of the letter.
If you get out to San Francisco, I recommend checking out Incanto and Boccalone. The folks that work at both restaurants are passionate about the food they make and serve, and it shines in the flavor of the food and experience of dining and shopping.