Breaking Frisco

Thursday of Finals week arrived and Mireia and I went to Union Station to get on our Bolt Bus to San Francisco - Spring Break had come.

8 hours later we found ourselves in SF. At the break of dawn. Thankfully we were in the financial district where one café opened around 4 in the morning. So we stayed there until sunlight found its' way through the scy scrapers.

After resting at the hotel for a bit we walked to Coit Tower and then Pier 39.

The weather was really good, so we wanted to take advantage of that and walk a lot that first day. So we continued to Fishermans Wharf.

And visited this treasure of arcades! Some of the stuff in there was SO old, it was fantastic.

We didn't have a lot of coins, so we each chose one thing to try. I got my myself a prophesy haha.

And we kept walking... for too long. We realized too late that no one has thought to build restaurants or cafées along the waterfront - very odd with all the tourists there. So we went out of batteries. Thankfully the Palace of Fine Arts caught our attention and we went into their very bare warehouse building in which they had an even odder exhibit (and a big Hunger Games one?) - and snacks. Blessed be their souls.

 Our trek continued. But then we made it to the really good view points of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Point Break, where Vertigo was famously filmed (even though you couldn't even get to the spot where they filmed as it was closed of?) and Crissy Fields.

We then found our way home, almost died of exhaustion, but managed to go out for dinner and card games. 

Saturday we went to the Mission District.

Gorgeous old and new murals decked the walls everywhere, but especially in Balmy and Clarion Alley. The first was really touristy and the second had hipsters absolutely everywhere.

Mission in general was very much HIPSTER NATION. The little shops and cafées were all themed in that style too. There was a ton of record, book and thrift stores and we basically went to them all.

One of the book stores had a little art gallery too - where I found these lovely pieces by Shannon Taylor. I am now in love with her stuff. It's the perfect mixture of fairy tale and art nouveau.

Hipster pitt stop!

Since we were pretty close we went over to Castro afterwards and caught the last glimpses of daylight there. We were there for long enough to get a good sense of the ambience in that part of town too!

They had a lot of great screenings at the Castro theatre - later in the week they were showing a sing-a-long version of The Little Mermaid. I settled for The Princess Diaries though.

In the morning it was Alcatraz time! We had booked our tickets on the bus up and didn't realize how lucky we were to have gotten tickets. They were sold out for the next 3 weeks. So we were no longer bummed that our time slot was so early - we were just happy to have gotten tickets.

It turned out to be a good thing all around - the fact that we got there at an early hour meant we got a free tour with Ranger Mike and we went inside the prison JUST as it started raining.

 When we left Alcatraz Island, everyone was getting absolutely drenched. So the timing worked out.
We had been on the island for a lot of hours though and had to hurry to our second plan for the day: The Walt Disney Family Museum. We got there just under 2 hours before closing.

They had a lot of cool things there. A great detail was the interior of the elevator - it was decorated as the train in which Walt got his Mickey-idea. And they had the oldest known Mickey sketches on display!

It was really great to see a lot of beautiful originals. They didn't have a lot from Sleeping Beauty unfortunately, but I still got to see some of Marc Davis' paintings. The galleries were really neatly set up too.

And then of course there was the Disneyland section, complete with all kinds of original models.

 So detailed!

They had a very sweet epilogue section too, in which artist said goodbye to Walt. And I enjoyed seeing the Snow White Oscar (along with all the others on display).

The next morning we got up to see the Japanese Tea Garden while it was still free. It was a pretty surreal experience - because it looked so right.

The wonky bridge was my favourite - and then I felt very happy to have seen actual sakura in bloom too - El Nino kept washing them away down here in LA.

 I almost felt like I was in Japan.... Definitely the most impressive garden I've been to outside of Japan!

We then made our way to the Haights. They have a lot of stores on just that one street - which made it perfect even for rainy weather.

 I bought a lot of beautiful vintage things. I even snagged some great true vintage pieces from the Goodwill there!

We headed back. But I wanted to see the sunset with the international orange bridge. So I jumped in a Lyft, marvelled over the rainbow on the way there, and spent a good hour taking in the view. It was super gorgeous, but surprisingly chilly.