View from the Potting Shed

This is our final day in San Francisco. We both have mixed feelings about it: looking forward to getting home to familiar surroundings and our own bed, but we’re also enjoying the city and our family here.

This morning we had breakfast with Robert, Nicola and Lucinda, who was dressed as a mole — she was gorgeous! and for a creature with no opposable thumbs she did really well with her building blocks.

We’ve just finished packing, checked the UK weather report for the next five days and soon Zack will be whisking us down the freeway to San Francisco International Airport.

It’s been good writing for you all — thanks for reading!

Lots of love. Goonight San Francisco, wherever you are.

Gareth & Jane

The view from Top of the Mark was exactly what it said on the tin: top of the mark. We sat at a table overlooking Grace Cathedral and Nob Hill watching the sun set and the city lights come up while drinking cocktails and port (not together!).

Forty-five minutes later and nineteen floors below we made our way down California Street to Kearny and found ourselves outside ‘House of Nan King’, a highly recommended Chinese restaurant. Ushered in by the owner we sat at a table and waited for Kate’s friend Pete. He let me know by text message that he was looking for a parking space and on his way.

By the time he’d arrived we’d ordered. Or rather, we didn’t. The owner and chef asked us to trust him, and once we’d told him NO SEAFOOD we were treated to a stream of dishes arriving at our table. It was all delicious and well worth the $35. After dessert at a cake shop next door, Pete kindly gave us a lift home.

Something Jane has been saying since we arrived in SF on Thursday is that she’d like to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. To put this in context: Jane hates bridges. But she was determined to do it, just to prove to herself that she could. So today we wandered down to the bridge and did the 1.7 miles walk, and back again.

I say we wandered down, it took us over an hour to walk from Pacific Avenue through The Presidio to the SF-side of the bridge. Like so many historic landmarks in this country, just before you step onto this giant suspension bridge there is an opportunity to purchase one or two ‘tasteful’ mementos; an official outlet of American Heritage, if you like. We side-steped that in favour of making it our first stop on our triumphant return to terra firma.

The walk was easy. For me. Jane held tightly onto my hand as we stepped across the Golden Gate, suspended a couple of hundred feet above the water. At one point I stood next to the handrail and looked over, watching an enormous ship pass beneath laden with containers. Two highway patrol men cycled by and one commented on Jane’s facial expression.
“Do you not want to walk next to the edge?” he called.
“She doesn’t want to walk across at all!” I called back.

Beyond the second tower a couple approached us and asked “Do you mind taking a photograph of us?”, thrusting a camera into my hands. I was tempted to reply, “It’s okay, I’ve got my own camera,” take a photograph of them and walk away.

It took us about an hour to shuffle across the bridge into Marin County and back again. I took umpteen photographs en route, to document this historic occasion. So now Jane has challenged her fear of heights (Space Needle in Seattle), and bridges (Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco), what could be next? Next holiday I’ll challenge some of my fears: being snogged to death by supermodels; and standing at the top of an enormous building and losing my glasses, and then losing my balance, and then losing my life! Perhaps not. Apart from the supermodels bit.

We walked back by another route, along the coast into the Marina area of San Francisco, past the Palace of Fine Arts. On our way Jane pointed out a street sign: Crook Street. It had a One Way sign pointing into the bay towards Alcatraz, which we thought was quite apt.

To say that we walked up Broderick Street from Marina to Pacific Avenue really doesn’t do the steepness of the climb any justice. It’s a bit like saying Neil Armstrong went on a flight and then took a walk. I’m surprised the streets don’t have oxygen masks at each street corner, or climbing ropes and crampons!

In a couple of hours we’re heading out to Nob Hill to take cocktails at The Top of the Mark, a restaurant on the 19th floor of The Mark Hopkins Inter-Continental hotel, near Grace Cathedral. Then we’re meeting a friend of Silver Joinee Kate Arkless Gray for dinner in China Town before returning to pack for our homeward journey tomorrow.

Today we laid low and lived the life of luxury on Pacific Heights. This was the first day that Jane managed to get the option of a long lie; the extensive building-work in the area however conspired against her and she got up around 09:00. But from then on in we really did nothing much.

I came down to the office to check e-mail (7 pages of spam/virus attachments on my webmail) while Jane watched Spiderman on one of the cable movie channels. I then got on with writing up my memories of Will Reynish (a good friend of mine who died in a climbing accident a couple of years ago) on my Psion 5mx. It was for this reason (writing) that I upgraded from the Series 3mx. Quite a few Americans have commented on what a cool looking machine the Psion is, particularly its usable keyboard. (Are you listening Psion?)

Jane’s parents hiked up Pacific Avenue to join us for lunch. I say ‘join us’, what I really mean is they brought in lunch: a couple of ham sandwiches and three enormous and delicious American chocolate-chip, and peanut butter, cookies. We gave them the tour of the house, cupboards and all.

In the evening I heard Robert and his two kids, Dashiell and Lucinda, playing in the garden so I padded down the steps in my socks to pass on a parcel delivered by FedEx that afternoon. I ended up playing football (soccer) with Dashiell; Robert carrying Lucinda was in goal (between two trees). Jane came down and joined us just before Zack returned from the office needing to print some work for a meeting in L.A. tomorrow. Zack and Robert are currently working on a TV pilot based on Robert’s debut novel Boonville. So we followed Robert and Zack up to Robert’s study, the view from which is phenomenal (I may have already written about it). I returned to the guesthouse briefly to fetch the camera.

Robert then disappeared to get ready for the ballet; Zack took us to explore the basement. The basement is equipped, as I am sure yours is also, with a half-size basketball court, and sauna. Beneath the basement is the garage. We declined to take the lift back up to ground level. (And I’m not kidding!)

This evening Zack drove us over to his sister Jessica’s at Castro for pizza. We had a fun evening. Robert’s brother, Wayne Anderson and family (three lovely kids, Audrey, Julian and Miranda) also turned up, as did Jane’s parents. The topic of conversation over dinner was interesting. It ranged from the cost of public transport in New York, through American history (particularly the Spanish missions in California), to who invented the Caesar Salad!

Sadly such erudite conversation must come to an end, so here I am back in the office at the guesthouse updating my blog. I booted up the Dell PC this time to see if it too was connected to the net — and by jings! it is. I feel so much more comfortable typing on a PC. Folks here are amazed that I really know only one person in the UK who owns a Mac — all my family use Apple here: iMacs, iBooks and Apple PowerPCs.

Tomorrow is sadly our last full day in San Francisco, and yet there is so much still to do. Jane needs to walk over the Golden Gate Bridge, we need to visit Union Square and buy Jane some obnoxiously expensive souveniers (jewellery?) and … well, find out tomorrow what we get up to.

Jane and I were up bright and early this morning (unlike the sun) and out the door before Zack was awake. We hiked our way down Broadway Street to the Ferry Building, which took just over an hour, and purchased four tickets to Larkspur Landing. Forty-five minutes later Peter, Dorothy, Jane and myself were sitting on the San Francisco to Larkspur ferry while the waves, wind and rain did their best to upset our journey. My second cousin, once removed, Charlotte had arranged to meet us at the ferry terminal, but heavy traffic (70 miles at 20 mph) meant that she was delayed. But sooner or later (later!) we were back on the road and heading up Highway 101 towards the coast.

Much of the day was spent exploring the Californian countryside and coast, and although the wind and rain conspired against us it didn’t hamper our enjoyment and actually held off for our brief excursions outside the car. First we drove through Bodega Bay, the town where some of Hitchcock’s “The Birds” was filmed, to a vista point where we were able to sit and watch the Pacific Ocean crash against the coast, and seals playfully testing the surf. Many photographs were taken, and the sun even appeared for a moment, and with it a patch of blue sky and a rainbow.
Further up the coast, at Jenner, we looked at the mouth of the Russian River and discovered that nowhere was open for lunch there either.
We eventually stopped at Duncans Mills (I know! where is the apostrophe!?) for something to eat before exploring the Redwood groves at the Armstrong Woods near Geuserville. This was a perfect opportunity to escape the SUV for a while and walk off some of our lunch. On the path we came across a brass sign giving information about the Colonel Armstrong redwood, a massive tree over 1400 years old and 14 feet in diameter; the notice was also translated into braille above the English text. I couldn’t help noticing, however, that the sign was facing the opposite direction to the tree. So that, even if a blind chap was standing reading the braille notice even though he couldn’t see the tree HE WOULDN’T EVEN BE FACING THE RIGHT DIRECTION!

Following our brief jaunt in the forest, we returned east to Highway 101 and to Healdsburg, where we checked out Char’s house (where I had stayed all last week) before visiting Carol for drinks. Our last stop for the night, before we returned to the city, was Fitch Mountain Eddie’s for dinner, where again we disgraced ourselves by eating our own body weight in burgers.

Tomorrow is a free day; a quiet day; a lounging around, reading and writing day. Peter and Dorothy are coming over for lunch, and in the evening we’re heading over to cousin Jessica’s in the Castro for pizza dinner. Bring it on!

We took the elevator to the top of the Space Needle; it cost us $12.50 each for the privilege. Still, the view from the top was amazing. Jane considered the journey up (travelling at 10 mph) to be one of the most terrifying experiences of her life. There is a Starbucks at the top (of course!). We sat admiring the view supping a cardboard cup of hot chocolate.

Safely back on terra firma we crossed the Seattle Center park to part with more money ($19.50 each) to be allowed admission to the Experience Music Project (EMP), which began life as a Jimi Hendrix Museum and is now dedicated to telling the story of Rock’n'Roll. As my Mum rightly said in a text: real culture! I enjoyed most the guitar sculpture, made from well over 100 guitars, 40 of which play automatically; and the Jimi Hendrix exhibition.

Getting hungry, we took the monorail into town and having safely posted some gifts back home to Edinburgh (to save us from ruining them in our over-crowded baggage) we found an amazing sandwich bar before finding a bus to the airport.

Dave Gorman is right! Sea-Tac airport is the most cinnamon-est smelling airport in the world. The reason is Cinnabon a fast-food vendor that specializes in cinnamon-tasting baked goods. We were delighted, it didn’t smell at all Cinnamon-y when we arrived.

We’re now safely back in San Francisco. Zack ordered us Chinese food, which arrived in those cardboard cartons you see on American TV shows, and we watched the second episode of My Big, Fat, Obnoxious Fiance.

Tomorrow we take the ferry from SF to Larkspur, and meeting up with Charlotte Anderson we’ll take a tour of the coast and Redwood forest at Armstrong Grove. (It’ll be another late update of this blog.)

I haven’t seen Mark T. Powell (aka Empty Bowel; M. Tea Towel) since I was living in London, so that was probably 1997, but seeing him again it could have easily been last month: we picked up from where we left off. I’d never met his wife, Kathleen, or his daughters Ann-Marie and Sarah.

Our arrival on Saturday evening allowed us time to sit and chat with Mark, Kathleen and Ann-Marie, who was a little wary of us to begin with. It was so good to catch up, reminisce about NYC and laugh. Mark had found and dug out the t-shirt that Danny Curtis and I had hand-made for him on his final course at Durham in ‘91.

On Sunday morning we joined the family at church. Mark and folks are members of a Greek Orthodox congregation, so we sat in the second pew and spent the next hour and a half in a fluctuating state of awe and bewilderment. The singing was amazing and quite moving. Not being members of the Orthodox church we were denied communion, although we were allowed to eat the bread afterwards. I found that really quite difficult and was incredibly down for the rest of the day, which rather surprised me. In the afternoon, following an All-American Breakfast ™ of sausages, eggs and home-made waffles we were taken into town to expore Pike Street Market, complete with flying fish! We finished the day, following a delicious dinner of curry and cous-cous (?!) watching the film BEST in SHOW by Christopher Guest. A fine and humourous end to a fine and (at times) humourous day.

This morning (Monday) Mark kindly dropped us in town outside the Seattle Center (spelling!) and the Space Needle.