Our last weeks in California...

At the start of this adventure, our expectation of seeing pretty well most of San Francisco and with a bit of good luck, a small portion of northern california seemed fairly realistic. Its only looking back now that we can see just how pitifully small a dent we have made in our initial plans. The last 2 weeks in Berkeley have been incredibly emotional. The friendships established in Berkeley and Rosa Parks school have made our departure all the more painful and left a gaping hole in our family life.

Henry reading about the last Warriors game...

Last day in SF.... at the EXPLORATORIUM

Testing out Eoghan's new smoker...

Hitting the surf at Balinas

Thanks Henry, thanks Marla, thanks Dan!

Off to Canada for a few weeks........

San Francisco (Part 3)

The latest SF venture (yesterday):

We are now SF public transport experts! Lucia and Stella know all the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transport) underground station stops by heart! It takes us about 30-40 mins to get into the heart of SF by bus, BART and MUNI (tram). All for about $9 adult/$3 per child.

We hired our bikes from some cool dudes in North Beach ($93 for 4 bikes for the whole day) and set off on our expedition. Initially we just wanted to ride around the tourist haunts but ultimately we thought we could get up on the Golden Gate bridge. Note: 12:30, sun shining, no clouds......

Note: sun shining, no clouds......

Approaching Golden Gate bridge (in distance) 1pm. Note: Clouds, fog, cold wind!!!!!!

Almost there......

Here we are on the bridge....... we are not alone....... HUNDREDS of people on bikes, joggers etc are up here in 30 knots of wind!!!

Back down on the flat.... NOTE: sun!!!!! 

San francisco (Part 2)

Lunch with the Sypkes at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

We were really lucky to have the Sypkes kids (and Sarah) come over and visit us while they were at Palo Alto. We decided to meet them at the Golden Gate Park (see below)

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 Two minutes after meeting each other, the kids climbed the tallest play structure they could find...

 The Park was started in the late 1800's and is slightly larger than New York's Central Park. We only saw a tiny fraction of it but were impressed by the sheer scale of activities available, tennis, baseball, lawn bowl, bocce, handball etc just in the small east corner that we visited. All of these facilities were made available to the public.

Of course, the German carousel was a big hit.

Ice-cream before we have to say good bye

Lunch at a diner, of course!

San Francisco (Part 1)

We've started to explore the city over the last 2 weekends. We wanted a bit of "freedom" to explore some of the cool neighbourhoods, so we decided to rent a car, and soon realised that having a car in SF was a mixed blessing with car parking spots at a premium, but for a first visit, it was well worthwhile. One thing we learned is that summer weather in SF is dominated by the offshore fog that gets sucked into the bay area by the inland heating of the desert..... so by early afternoon, the Golden Gate bridge is shrouded in fog.

driving into the clouds...

North Beach area, looking down Lombard st. Some of these streets are really steep!

Union st, in Cow Hollow. Looks and feels much like Church st, Prahan, in Melbourne. 

Overlooking the downtown area. We finally found a car park in Little Italy, so of course we stayed to eat....

Magnificent little cul de sac,  VERY steep, with spectacular views over the bay to Angel island.