Golden Gate Park

If you go to San Francisco, besides wearing flowers in your hair, you must go to Golden Gate Park.

"Developed in the late nineteenth century, many years before the neighborhoods that surround it, the park offers over one thousand acres of gardens and forest, complemented by some of the city's best museums."

Cathy has noted that the San Francisco City Guides (soon to be our BFFs) offers a tour of the Japanese Tea Garden on Monday's at 9:30 a.m.  Yeah, it's a little early, but we should be able to get a seat on the cable car (do workers use the cable car?) just after 8 in the morning.  Then we can choose the bus (5L) or the N light rail (and we may not get a seat) to the north or south of the park and walk .3 or .5 miles to the tea garden.

Wouldn't that be a perfect way to start a day in the park?  The Tea Garden was created for the 1894 Columbian Exposition as the Japanese Village along with the Moorish Village, the Turkish Village, the Vienna Prater and others. After the exposition and more than two million people, two features were permitted to remain, the Art Museum and the Japanese Tea Garden. The Art Museum was eventually torn down in 1936.

The Midwinter Fair in Golden Gate Park, 1894

Somewhere there must be a photo of us as kids at the Japanese Tea Garden.  I don't remember that we ever had tea because it was always too expensive, but we admired the koi and climbed over the arched bridge.  And I don't remember it as near as crowded then as it was last time I visited. But at 9:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning it shouldn't be too bad.  Do you think the cherry trees will be in bloom?



And after the tour (and hopefully some tea and a fortune cookie, invented here for the Pan-Pacific Exposition of 1915),  we can check out the magnolias in the Botanic Garden just across the street.  They have a free magnolia highlight map we can pick up or download.

Cathy remembers the California Academy of Sciences for the stuffed gorilla that terrorized her childhood, but it's been revamped, and now offers a Rainforests of the World dome, a 90 ft in diameter space with a pathway that winds up three flights around trees and past animals.  And they have a Living Roof with over two acres planted with native Bay Area flora.  Unfortunately, it's very expensive at $25 each FOR SENIORS.  Maybe we can find a deal?  Maybe we'll just look at what we can see of the building, designed by Renzo Piano of  Pompidou Center fame.  The bulk of the old building was razed for the new.

de Young Museum

And on the other side of the Concourse is the de Young Museum which has its origin in that 1894 Exposition.  It's was also razed and rebuilt from the ground up between 2001 and 2005, and I haven't seen it at all.  It's a lot cheaper at $7, and they have an exhibit on the Building of the Bay Bridge based on photographs taken during the 1930's by Peter Stackpole and supplemented with prints and drawings of the Bay Bridge construction by his contemporaries, many of whom earned their living under the auspices of San Francisco’s Federal Art Project.

Then somehow or another using SF Muni we can get ourselves to the Beach Chalet facing the Great Highway between the two windmills.  "Come to the Beach Chalet for one simple reason to see the Lucien Labuadt murals on the first floor. The restaurant was funded in 1936 by the WPA. In those days the first floor was a lounge, changing rooms and the restaurant was the top floor (as it still is today).
The art is impressive and tells the story of 1930's San Francisco. Don't miss viewing the decorative tile work and the carved magnolia-wood balustrade and newels in forms of sea monsters, octopus and mermaids. The whole building is a delight to view and should not be missed by anyone visiting the bay area." 

Somebody says it also has good beer!  I don't think we can wait that long for lunch, but maybe a picnic lunch and a beer (or something) here?