Sightseeing in SF

For the last few days I've been exploring San Francisco, getting to know the city. It's a great city for walking, and the public transportation system is pretty efficient and easy to learn if you're paying attention.

Yesterday Caren and I went to Golden Gate Park to hang out, go up to the observation tower in the de Young museum to see a panoramic of the whole city, and check out the Japanese Zen Gardens and the Rose Garden.

In the Rose Garden there were so many different species of roses, each had its own personality. I imagined that there was wedding rose, prom rose, hyper-colored rose, prettiest girl in the room rose, so 80's rocker rose, I know I'm perfect rose...the list goes on.



And when the breeze would float through the rose garden (as the breeze often does in this city) all of the different scents of all of the roses would pull together and the smell was amazing. Just like you'd expect a lot of roses to smell.



This is a pretty cool city. Today I toured around everywhere, and of course today is the one day that I didn't bring my camera. Here are some of the highlights that I've enjoyed in SF:

* Union Square - yes, it's just a plaza, but something always leads me back here. It's kind of like the city center for me
* Boat tour around the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz - unfortunately the actual tour of Alcatraz was sold out today (it does that on the weekends), but the boat tour was pretty cool.
* North Beac - I just like this area
* Riding the MUNI and the BART - just because I figured out how to do it, that's why I think it's cool
* Golden Gate Park - it's HUGE and there is so much going on. The primitive botanical garden was super rad with all sorts of really hardy plants.
* Haight Ashbury - historically it's cool, otherwise I found it to be kind of comercialized in an anti-comercial way.
* China Town - is it even just a section of town? I swear it's big enough to be its own little universe inside the city. It's like being in China (I'd imagine). I wanted to buy all sorts of weird foods there. But I didn't.
* Fisherman's wharf is a novelty, it's great to be by the water but the scene is kind of fraternity for some reason. It kind of reminded me of the Landing in St. Louis.

More touring tomorrow! Tomorrow I'm heading to Berkley to check out the campus, and also looking for the City Lights book store so I can stand in front and take a picture. I should look for a beret to wear, that would be a good prop.