San Francisco Park

We spent Saturday at the de Young art museum. It was very large with 3 levels of exhibits. The lower level contained a lot of modern art. Some of it was interesting, a lot of it was pretty weird.

On the second level there were some more modern art exhibits along with a native American art exhibit. The third level was pretty interesting with native carvings from around the world and some classical American art. The American art was very nice with silverware, furniture and paintings. There were one group of paintings that were so realistic that I thought the exhibit was a serious of objects displayed in glass cases... until I actually went up to them and realized they were only paintings. The carvings were very interesting, especially the Papua New Guinean pieces which included decorated skulls and head-hunter racks.

Here are some photos from the exterior of the building (photography was not allowed indoors). There was a park out front with a fountain. The fountain did not have any water (like all the fountains back in Brisbane) and kids were using it to skateboard in.


Here's a close-up of the building's copper exterior.

Twin Peaks

After visiting the art museum, we went up to Twin Peaks which overlooks the city. It was pretty busy with tourists and there was traffic backed up around the lookout. The view was great and we were able to take some good photos.

City skyline:

View of the Golden Gate Bridge from Twin Peaks:

Sonoma Wineries

Danielle and I went touring around the Californian wine country on Sunday. We visited Viansa and Gundlach-Bundschu Wineries in the Sonoma Valley. We also visited the township of Sonoma. The day was really fun. We had a great lunch and it was good to see the wine country. Here are a few photos from the trip:

San Francisco

Dan and I spent a couple days in the city over the weekend. We walked from the Ferry Terminal to Fisherman's Warf. The weather here is cool, it is the middle of summer but feels like spring or even a warn winter's day in Brisbane. Although the UV is still high (we got pretty sunburnt on our walk).

Here are a couple of photos of Danielle and I in a park near the Ferry Terminal and the Bay Bridge:

Carnelian Room

We had our 1^st anniversary dinner at the Carnelian Room on the 52nd floor of a San Francisco high-rise building. I had forgotten about the earthquake activity in California until Danielle brought it up while were eating dinner (in one of the tallest buildings in town). We later found out it survived the 1989 earthquake! The food and service was great and the view was spectacular, we ordered coffee to make sure we were there to see nightfall (at around 9:00PM!). The Bay Area lights surround the horizon and look great from that height. They look even better when you are flying in by plane, but you do not have the time to enjoy while the plane is making a steep left bank to line up with the runway. Here are a couple photos:

More photos

We did the cable-car and were walking up and down the huge, steep San Francisco hills all weekend (great exercise)... We walked around Chinatown a few times where we came across a some stores selling ?illegal? fireworks.. We should have taken more photos, but were having too much fun (and were a bit lazy). Here are a couple more snaps:

Hills we had to walk up and down to get from the hotel (at the top of the hill!) to get around.


Had to do the cable-car (we were lazy on one trip).