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?

Musee d'Orsay

Musee d’Orsay
I love Victorian railway stations – the immense size and the skeletal structure and the knowledge that their prominence in both size and the public imagination was so short-lived, so I’m very taken with the Musee d’Orsay, an art museum in a converted railway station. The Orsay train station was built on the eve of the Paris Universal Exposition of 1890, service was inaugurated in 1900 and only continued for some 30 years before the station was abandoned as the platforms were too short for long-distance trains. In its day the station and its hotel were absolutely luxurious and train stations around the world (Grand Central in NYC and Union Station in DC) were modeled after it.
After its abandonment it served a variety of purposes (movie set, holding center for returning prisoners of war, etc) and was slated for the wrecking ball until it was saved in 1977 with a proposal to transform it into a museum devoted to 19th century art (from 1848 to 1915..well, sort of).
So not only does it have a wonderful building, but also a wonderful collection. And it is much, much smaller than the Louvre so we should be able to handle it. The website is very sophisticated And even if you’re not coming along you’ll be able to visit the museum online. There are a number of videos which I will watch myself when I’m on a better computer.
How will we get there? We’ll take the 69 bus or just walk. And how much will we pay? 8 Euros. There is a lunchtime concert on Tues, March 8 at noon-thirty. I wonder if that’s included in the admission. (No, 12 Euros regular, 6 reduced rate, but that allows admission to the permanent collection) Oh this is confusing. My next job will be studying up on the museum pass.