Golden Gate Park

On Saturday we spent most of our day at Golden Gate Park visiting the Japanese Tea Gardens, De Young Museum, and the Strybing Arboretum. We'd already decided that it was too far of a walk for us and set out to find a cab right after breakfast. $25 later we were dropped off at the front door of the De Young Museum for the start of our adventure. Since the weather was nice we decided to walk past the museum, down to the Japanese Tea Gardens and start there. It was a good size garden and only second to the one in Portland. Unfortunately it was the wrong time of year for any kind of blooms or fall colors, but it was still beautiful (and peaceful).

High-five Buddha, high-five!

After the Japanese Tea Gardens we walked back to the De Young Museum to get our walk on in the big, multi-storied modern building.

Our Ancient Americas doppelgangers.

 Gold hair clips from 7-8th century Panama.I've been looking for a nice, gold tooth hair clip.

Enjoying the best decaf of the trip outdoors in the back of De Young while Chris got stabbed in the head by some of the yard art. After lunch at a Turkish restaurant in the neighborhood, our last stop in the park was the arboretum and botanical gardens. We got there just in time to catch a guided, docent tour which was fabulous. We learned so much about magnolia trees and leaves and flowers that we never would have figured out on our own.

My favorite part of the gardens were the herb gardens where they encouraged you to touch and smell and the herbs. I had no idea rosemary came in so many scents.

We chose to skip the science museum at $25 per person admission. Plus, by that point, both of our feet needed a break. One of my little toes was getting rubbed raw and the boy's heal was starting to hurt. So we shelled out another $25 to get delivered back to the hotel. After another short nap we walked over to our little residential restaurant (Pat's Cafe) we'd found the night before for dinner and had the best grilled calamari salad. I had grilled veggies over polenta for dinner while Chris got a more appetizing looking fish and chip plate. Neither of our dinners were crazy fantastic, but the calamari salad made the trip worth it. And of course we topped if all off with more cheesecake from the potato place across from our hotel.

We'd originally thought about going out to Alcatraz on Sunday morning before heading back home, but at the last minute scrapped the idea. We preferred the idea of sleeping in (though we had a hard time falling asleep with the lady in the neighboring room moaning so loudly we had to turn the TV up to block her out), enjoying a leisurely breakfast and then hitting the road. Plus, we were done walking, having already logged what felt like thousands of miles in the past two days. We had a great time and love having something like San Fran close enough for a quick weekend trip that doesn't require a lot of planning, but provides lots of entertainment.