Wednesday 31 March 2004

California 2004 - Day 1


Aside from the fact that this day started WAY TOO EARLY (up by 3:15am to catch at 6:00am flight), but I got a good amount of sleep on the plane, and it turned into a beautiful day, raining yesterday instead of today. =) Yay.

We took lunch in Mountain View where Branson lives at this really fabulous (and cheap!) Japanese place- Bento boxes for everyone! Man being a Catholic during Lent is way too easy in this town- the fish is so tasty that it's not really penitent, but hey I'll save the guilt for something else. *wink*

Then we headed to San Fran, and started off by spending a good 3.5 hours in the Asian Art Museum across the street from the recently famous City Hall. Talk about an great museum!! Not only does it have some amazing pieces & is arranged very well, but the building itself is also really interesting, being cobbled together from one very old building with new, very modern glass additions onto some of the sides. So visually appealling inside and out. We didn't get all the way through, but will probably finish it up tomorrow.

Afterwords, we walked towards the shopping district. The guys let me do my girly thing picking up some bath bombs from Lush and then walking through Union Square toward China town, where we grabbed some very tasty Dim Sum and tea. That's the great thing about Asian places--good tea.

Overall, San Fran is a really odd city; kind of a cross between Singapore with all of the ethnic diversity and New York City with all of the buildings and the odd street crazy elements. Needless to say that it twisted with my perspective. Granted, I'm more than a smidge naive about these things, so it's probably good for me. It is a fabulous city though, and I'm looking forward to getting to see more of it tomorrow. The agenda is looking something like: Finishing the museum, Golden Gate, Japanese Tea Gardens (mmmmm tea), Japan Town, and the Castro (just for Pyrex & our Monkey--that should be an eye opener for sure!), and whatever else happens to come up. There is also talk of a bonfire on the beach tomorrow night, so that should be especially promising. It's a kind of Zen weekend with some of my favorite people.