Monday, 28 July 2014

27th July SF to Bodega Bay on Highway 1

This morning's breakfast was at the Devil's teeth bakery (breakfast sandwich: buttermilk biscuit with egg & bacon; huge blueberry scones, banana & walnut bread) , opposite this grocery store) - 

The firemen came in for breakfast too. If you have a firetruck (or an ironman come to that)  you can park it anywhere you like

There 'tis
ballet practice







City skyline

Being a beautiful, sunny Sunday afternoon by the time we sauntered to the bridge, there was a lot of traffic out of SF & we had to abandon Muir Woods & Muir beach as well as other stop offs. We wasted a lot of time failing to park anywhere. Slow traffic along the windy roads of the Marin headlands.


Hazard warning

Stinson beach hut

Dad (second from right) doing a John Stonehouse

Jellyfish again (loads on the beach as previously) - but other people seeming to ignore them, or build sandcastles with them



We toasted on the beach for a couple of hours, leaving at 4pm & drove past some enticing stop offs by Point Reyes etc., but we were tired. Got to Bodega Bay 6pm, very hungry (we shared a bag of cherries for lunch on the beach) Fish & chip supper. Fog rolled in

Sunday, 27 July 2014

26th July day in SF


At the diner for breakfast

Yup - that's breakfast. (Lunch was pretzels outside Maceys in Union Square after that lot)

On the beach. 

Sand dollar

Jelly fish and 10c

One day on the streets of San Francisco




Residents of Pier 39 Fisherman's Wharf

Visitors

... throngs of us. It is Saturday afternoon on a lovely day
Views of Alcatraz island and East to the Bay bridge, but a bank of fog hid all but a faint grey outline of the the Golden Gate bridge.

Getting away from the city was a bit like being in the film "Trains, planes and automobiles"  Huge queue for cablecar (we estimated 60 min), so we gave up, only to wait 40 minutes plus for buses that never came, so we walked most of Columbus to dine in Washington square.

Very noisy show of fire engines & a police car, racing along 4th, as we stomped  back towards Powell station having missed the stop. At the Muni stop for SF zoo at 10.30, Dad had to be woken up

Saturday, 26 July 2014

25th July departure and arrival




And Rosie came too - Manchester


Heathrow


90 minute flight delay due to thunderstorm

Flight lowlights: Dad spilled orange juice, TWICE - first on Rowena's trousers, then Clara's.


Ocean Park Motel, SF






Tuesday, 22 July 2014

The route

Getting there - H is a "day trip" to the Nevada County Fair & a rodeo in the evening 

Getting back

Sunday, 20 July 2014

Getting ready to go

Mum & Dad are coming to house and cat-sit while we are away, so we thought we had better tidy up a little to decrease  the death-trap hazard-rating of the front room.

The titanic spare-bedroom, front-room and under-stairs, clearout is now reaching its culmination, after boxes out of the loft, trips to the recycling centre or Oxfam (3 or 4 so far) and an eBay sale of model train pieces that ends this Sunday evening. On this, seemingly endless voyage of wading though "stuff" of ages, some delightful treasure discoveries. But its mostly been an excess of computer cables, shredding of documents, empty boxes, old christmas-cracker toys, puzzles, incomplete packs of cards, bin bags. All accompanied by Tommy the cat making himself comfy in a heap of empty or part-full bin bags, right in my way.

Finally: new boxes of stuff in the loft, boxes under bed in spare-bedroom,  all in the space vacated by the preceding clearout. These to make decisions on our return (there's more model trains, train track, cameras & camera-pieces, telescope, printers, for example): either to sell or, more likely, simply to forget until the next time we need a clear out.

With tins of paint now under the floorboards, and the front room still overpopulated with chairs its a vast improvement.

Time to set up the blog with a family photo to get it going! Clara refuses to participate by declaring "Not now", as apposed to the usual "Later", both of which are typical responses to requests to tidy her room and mean exactly the same thing: "never".