Golden Gate
Matt says that my futon is actually quite comfortable, although he admits that it might be only in contrast to sleeping on his friend Adam's couch in LA for the last week and a half. When I first moved into my post-school apartment in Madison, I bought that futon for my bed a couple of months later, and some months after that I found that I was having some back trouble, so I bought a mattress and box-spring, which has served me very well since. The futon became my couch, and has been used as a bed a couple of times since.
Having Matt over has shown me that what I need to do at some point is get a real couch, and get a nice-but-smaller futon for my study. (The couch futon is a queen size.) It's a little awkward, as you might admit, to have my living room used as a bedroom. Giving guests a private room might work a little better, even with a smaller bed.
I suggested that we go over the hills again to Half Moon Bay and drive from there up the coast on Route 1, and he said that sounded fine. So we did that, and boy, are there some beautiful bluffs and valleys along that road! I definitely need to get up that way again!
Matt wanted to check out Golden Gate State Park, which is in the west-center of the city. It's impressively large, about 30 blocks long, west-to-east. We drove for some distance along the southern edge, then went into the park and drove around it for some time.
I'd have to say that if I lived in San Francisco, I'd love to live near the Golden Gate Park, and would take every opportunity to go biking and walking in it. It's lovely! Plenty of trees, various large grassy areas, hills, many roads and sidewalks, and various structures dotting the landscape here and there. Apparently there are bison in the park as well, but we didn't see any. (Ceej said a few days later that she and David saw some when they did the Bay-to-Breakers walk/run a few months ago, and David just about jumped out of his skin. I said I'd like to accompany them if they do B2B again next year.)
I was interested in going to the natural history museum while we were there - it's one of several museums inside the park itself, and is in the same building as the aquarium. Matt said he'd like to see the aquarium, so we did that. Well, the natural history museum was disappointing: A Tyrannosaurus skeleton, yes, and also an Allosaurus one, and various other smaller (non-dinosaur) fossils, but really it was rather small. The aquarium was much nicer, with some impressive large fish. Matt seemed pretty happy with it.
(Yes, I'm a longtime dinosaur freak, although far less nutty about it now than I was when I was, say, six. But I still love a good set of fossils. I loved the Yale natural history museum when I went there a few years ago, and hope to get back to Harvard's Peabody Museum next time I'm in Boston.)
While in the park we also walked over Strawberry Hill, which is a large mound in more-or-less the middle of the park. From the top you can see much of the city laid out before you, climbing a hill in the distance. It's rather pretty. Yes, I did remember to bring my camera.
We drove around the edge of the city, along the ocean, into the Presidio. (We actually stopped first at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, which is the scene of a major moment of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.) The center of the Presidio is clearly the heart of the military base, although we didn't stop there long. We were more interested in going to see the Golden Gate Bridge.
We stopped near the Bridge and parked, and walked along what was (I think) the East Battery, a wall which was intended - 140 years ago - to be a battlement on which cannons would be mounted. Apparently budget issues (!) prevented it from being completed, and a decade or so later advancing technology sent development off in some other direction. But most of it is still there. (I guess there's a West Battery, too.)
And, yes, we were close enough that we were able to walk along the Golden Gate Bridge for some distance. We wondered just how long the thing is. (I guessed half a mile, figured it was actually somewhat shorter. The truth is: Two miles long! Glad we didn't walk all the way across!) Another key scene in Vertigo took place outside the fort beneath the Bridge, though we didn't go down there this day.
We eventually ended up in downtown SF, at Fisherman's Wharf, which is a very commercial part of the city, obviously mainly intended to attract tourists. We wandered around downtown for some time - wondering whether the TransAmerica Pyramid is the tallest building in the city or not (Matt later found a reference that said yes, it is, and then later contradicted itself. Hmm) - and walked through Chinatown. We ended up back at Ghirardelli Square, where we had some ice cream sundaes, bought some chocolate at their gift store, and finally headed out. We stopped off on the peninsula for some solid food, and headed home
A full day. My feet ached. I had fun, though. Saw a bunch of stuff that I hadn't seen before. Must go back and see more sometime.
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