Saturday, January 07, 2012

over the Palace of Fine Arts

As much as I hate having to schlep across San Francisco to get there, the Palace of Fine Arts and its lagoon are among my favorite places in the area. It's just lovely, and has neat history, and I've been visiting it most of my life. I'll be sad when the Exploratorium moves to the waterfront at the Embarcadero, just because fewer people will incidentally be exposed to the Palace of Fine Arts.

Here's a neat video from the air, from a little bitty airship, so you can see how lovely it is.

I only went out for a walk.....

I only went out for a walk.....

Wednesday, January 04, 2012

San Francisco is a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

Instead, I just live very near there.

Stephen Fry likes it, in part because it's near so many beautiful places:



That's one of my favorite things about Northern California in general: It's a short drive to the High Sierra, some of the most beautiful parts of California's coast, to farmlands, to really great urban advantages, to the Golden Gate Bridge, to science museums and art, because there is open space and nature everywhere -- visionaries began preserving it here more than a century ago -- and because we have the climate to enjoy it year-round. (That is true for most places depending on what climate you like; with my tendency to get really sick in hot humidity, I can't bear those climates in the summer.)

I don't want to live in San Francisco though. I have before, but now, I want a yard for my dog, and I want not to have my house actually touching other houses (it's just a fire danger worry, house fires there can displace a few families), and San Francisco proper gets a bit cold and windy for me off and on all year, what with water on three sides. And I'm a gimp, and SF has a lot of uphill and downhill.

But it's a nice place to visit, and I'm glad I get to do that a lot. I discover new things there on a regular basis, though I've been visiting for nearly 50 years, and I'm glad I get to raise my child so near such a treasure.