san francisco day trip

New places to play

| poppypeach

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I don’t get out much these days with study and a ton of other tasks to do at home so I had a mission to go into San Francisco for the day to renew my daughter’s passport at the Australian Consulate. I hopped onto the train to allow myself a time of chilling and knitting which was excellent as I have many projects going on at the moment. Arriving in San Francisco and walking through SOMA I have never seen so many dudes in my life – hey if you are a single woman get out there! There were packs of them and as my hubby says its ‘cos of all the tech companies in South of Market. Funny they all look the same and dress the same in their little uniforms of trainers, jeans, t-shirt or checked shirt and some facial hair and glasses. Walking through the city there were many homeless people even camped outside the building on Market Street right in the middle of the Financial District. Crazy how there is so much money in this city and there is no real solution to the problem of housing for the homeless. Hopefully, with the upcoming election, some wise nut will be able to do something about it and begin to care for the community. As I was walking down 3rd Street there was a hotel worker strike demanding better conditions and pay – go for it and I wish you all the best of luck, it is a tough and demanding job often disregarded by the many folks who travel and expect more.

Thank goodness the Australian Consulate has such an easy process with the paperwork and it all went smoothly! With 30 minutes to spare I wandered down the road to Bluestone Lane, an Aussie inspired cafe. The story goes that the guy who started the chain began his coffee shop franchise in New York by the need to get a decent coffee and enjoy an Aussie style coffee shop. I went to the cafe in the hope of having a CUP of tea but this is the cafe and only do “to go” so I had a paper cup and had to recycle it! They had a couple of tables outside and there I sat and ate my $8 avocado toast out of a box and read my book on Swedish Death Cleaning. I really needed to go to the coffee shop in Union Square if I wanted to have a latte with a cup and saucer, this is all explained on their website, American style to go or Aussie style sit down, relax and enjoy a cuppa.  Anyway, it was not as exciting as I thought it would be and as I have been living in America for ages I always set my expectations low, so I do not suffer disappointment.

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Our baby girl Bella chilling out – which is where I should be but between subjects for Uni but alas, I have a bunch of stuff to catch up on, mainly sewing!

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To end the week I helped out at my work for a couple of hours on Friday and volunteered at the school walkathon for another 3 hours and I was done and dusted for the week, time to chill. Missy had just come back from her trip away on science camp for 4 days and was determined to get herself a t-shirt by walking 75 laps which equals around 18 miles (28 km) that is quite a walk! She did it and was quite pleased that she scored a shirt but by the time she got to the end they had run out of t-shirts so she will get it this week! Still, I am quite amazed that these 5th-grade girls mustered up the energy to complete the walkathon after their epic 5-hour hike on science camp, though they did say that was training for the walkathon 😀

The weekend was pretty packed with stuff to do with the kids going to the harvest festival with their chickens for 4H and sharing their chickens at a petting zoo and pet parade. Unfortunately one of the white king pigeons flew away, hopefully, he finds his way back to the coop – it was quite distressing for the kids to see him fly away!

On Sunday we met our friends up in San Francisco at a hidden gem called Glen Canyon Park where we hiked around the natural habitats to the main drag of Portola and found some food before we walked uphill to Twin Peaks and Sutro Tower. Glen Canyon Park has such a fascinating history which was saved from development by the “Gum Tree Ladies” in the 1970s. The park provides habitats for Red Tailed Hawks, coyote, racoon and many other critters of the city. There is a fenced off super cool park for the kids to climb and play but be warned – Adults must be accompanied by children! 

We enjoyed burgers at Tower Burgers which was a 10-minute walk away from the top of the hill and with some energy we continued our walk uphill towards Twin Peaks.

The views on Twin Peaks were breathtaking, as was the wind that was blowing us sideways! The crows were having a grand old time flying in and out of the wind currents up there. Here is San Francisco in all its glory. The kids had a blast pretending to be crows using their jackets as wings.

We headed back to the car by walking along the Gum Tree Girls trail and encountered many obstacles such as tree roots, low hanging branches, tunnels of scrub which makes it such a wonderful walk you have to be aware of your surroundings. This was another fun time in San Francisco with our friends being tourists for the day and discovering new places to play!

 

Immigration stories

| poppypeach

It was so good to have a mental health day away from studies over the weekend! It needed to happen as Uni has been pretty full on and now with booking my flight to arrive in Melbourne on the 29th December, its all starting to get real!

I went out for an SF stairs walk with my friends – we were doing the walk up to Telegraph Hill. First, we had to have something to eat so we found this incredible Mexican joint, Don Pistos on Union Street. There I discovered spiked horchata – that is spiked with rum! I took one sip and tipped the whole thing all over the table, lucky my friend got out in time!! The guys cleaned it up quick sticks and bought me another, thank goodness it was not as strong as the first, I am such a lightweight drinker lately. Oh, and the fish tacos were just incredible with a bit of spice on the fish and the slaw was so fresh atop fresh corn tortillas – divine!

After lunch, we headed up the hill to Coit tower and travelled up many stairs to the top checking out the many vistas as we went along. The view of the bay was stunning. We walked right to the top of the hill and then we went back down feeling a bit of vertigo on the way.

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There is the Bay Bridge that connects the city to Oakland and here are the stairs, which proved to be a great workout – thank goodness I was not too wasted!

After our stair adventure, we wandered down the Embarcadero for a little while checking out the scene, the weather was absolutely perfect!

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This incredible art piece of a polar bear was in San Francisco after being built at Burning Man. It was installed as part of the climate summit held in the city over the week – this is such a statement to global warming – a thin polar bear suffering at the loss of its Arctic habitat.

Oh and here’s a little immigration story… my son was asking about why my family immigrated to Australia for a school project.

My mum and her family moved over in 1962 and travelled to Melbourne by ship called the Oriana and it took about 2 weeks to get to Station Pier in Port Melbourne. They moved to the coldest place in Victoria – Newborough where my nan moved from her teaching job to work as a librarian. It was funny that they moved there from tropical Sri Lanka. The reason they left Sri Lanka was that there was a coup d’etat in Columbo and there was no scope and no future for their family there. They left with their suitcases, a few furniture pieces to white Australia. The only reason they were accepted into Australia was that their credentials were important – meaning they had to prove they were of European background. As it turns out my Nan side was Dutch and my Pops side was French. The white Australia policy ended in 1973, such a fascinating racist past in what is now multicultural Australia.

My mum and dad met at a cricket match in Melbourne and they married in 1965 when they went up to Queensland for a holiday that was where they wanted to be with the tropical weather.

My dads family moved over in 1949 and lived and went to school in St Kilda as his Dad has retired from the railway so they migrated to Australia. They too had to write out their genealogy to prove they had a European background and my dad’s side is German. His family moved to the country when he grew up when he met my mum when she was 21. Dads family also migrated for a better life in Australia and he travelled on the ship Orontes, this is history we need to retain for our future. Thanks, Mum and Dad and Cheryl for sharing this story with me over the weekend!

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The ship my Dads family travelled on from Sri Lanka

 

Viewing the arts

| poppypeach

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A week of art and craft happened last week with a field trip to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco on Friday with the 2nd graders.

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The kids had exploration one day of the week and created many fun objects, this doll was inspired by the pipe cleaner dolls.

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At the volunteer sewing teaching, we were working on LED cuffs, and these are examples of the Kinder and 1st-grade students.

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I was teaching the 2nd graders to make Gods eyes in their exploration time – so much fun yarn to make holiday decorations.

Friday came, and it was time for the field trip to San Francisco! The kids were very excited, and we drove up in the morning for a 10am Storytelling throughout the museum with volunteers. They told us many stories beginning with the story of Lakshmi and Diwali the festival of lights then we travelled to Indonesia to view Kris (daggers) and listen to a folk story and the last story was about Ganesh riding on a rat with his love of laddoos. Our storyteller Monique was so full of character and brought the stories to life!

After lunch and no running around the kids and their chaperones and teachers went wandering around the museum. We found many beautiful textiles, which I love plus little tiny colourful snuff bottles and this nephrite shepherd with his goats. The Asian Art Museum has something for everyone, though our 2nd-grade class maybe could enjoy it more if there were more Pokemon!

Couture Korea was an exhibit the kids really enjoyed with many kimono to view and also to touch with fabric samples on the information panel – the interactive was a plus with these guys! Of course, I really enjoyed it too being a textile lover and always wanting to touch interesting fabrics and seeing detailed clothing design. The majority of the pieces were silk and felt beautiful.

Come the weekend I enjoyed a white elephant exchange with my work friends and a tasty dinner of savoury crepes and potluck appetisers. Saturday was a bike ride day and catching up on study and Sunday the house needed a bit of sprucing up after I enjoyed a fabulous Thai massage at Sawadee down the road, it was well needed and has enlivened my soul, namaste.

 

Raise a glass to freedom

| poppypeach

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The first few days of the school holidays and yes it has been exciting! No, actually it felt like a very long week, but I had something to look forward to after completing 2 more subjects in my Teaching course I had a goal of seeing Hamilton – An American Musical in San Francisco. As it happened my good friend and her daughter was seeing it on the same day, so we met for lunch before the show. We were all very excited to see Hamilton at last, after listening to the soundtrack many times!!

To pass the time this week – the kids enjoyed cat encounters at their swimming class in the Los Altos Hills.

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I experimented with coconut milk and rockmelon to make this delicious lassi. Another fave food item I found this week was Coconut Manna my neighbour made me buy it to taste it, and it is divine, I made raw brownie bites as a treat! I need to catalogue this as it was too easy to make and way cheaper than buying chocolate as an after dinner treat.

And finally Saturday came around, and I was preparing for my adventure on Thursday as there were little things to organise like making sure I had the ticket!! So it turned out I was sitting alone in the Loge section of the theatre at seat C26, and it was incredible, it was hard to know when you spend so much on a ticket to the show and hope that the seats are good. This turned out perfect, and with my binoculars, I got an excellent view of the whole cast.  The funny thing was in all the seats in the theatre I bought a seat sitting behind friends from Mountain View who had bought their tickets in December – all 6 of them! Now that is a small world :D, and there they are in front of me in the bottom image.

Funnily enough, I actually enjoy going to the theatre but spending the $ and finding a show I love is rare – rare enough that in all the 10 years I have lived in the Bay Area I have not been to one show in San Francisco. I have been to smaller productions here locally but not a Broadway show, and I was blown away by how spectacular it was! Now I really get the amount of cash spent on tickets for shows like this as they are incredible. I really enjoyed the soundtrack, and I realised if I don’t go to see this show in San Francisco when will be the time to see it? I am not going to New York anytime soon, and that show was totally sold out anyway! So I managed to find a seat between some friendly folks and really enjoyed my first Broadway show experience here in San Francisco! The pictures say it all, I was very excited!!

After the show, I met up for a final farewell to my friends before the summer, and we take off to Australia – it was so cool for my friend’s daughter to get a signed autograph and picture of Ryan Alvarado who played Hamilton at our matinee performance!

Sunday was the ice cream social at our park, and the neighbours came out in force getting their free ice cream on a windy, sunny day! I met my lovely friend / ceramic teacher Susan who did the face painting for the kiddos, and her work is beautiful, and all the kids were super happy, I especially loved the huge unicorn on my neighbours face.

 

A piece a Week – The library workshop and a sock cat!

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This week was totally taken over by the preparation of the workshop for the Mountain View Library. We had 15 people show up for the event and 4 machines and a serger & 2 volunteers and myself to teach the workshop. The workshop was a patchwork tote using FabMo fabric interior design 8″ and 12″ squares. Everyone was really enthusiastic about the project and wanted to completed their tote! For a challenge to the sewers in the class I added make a french seam on either side seam as a featured technique. I made a couple of videos for those who had to finish the project at home – part 1 https://vimeo.com/134362917 & part 2 https://vimeo.com/134363222. I did have a student who was super keen to finish so here is the completed bag by one happy maker!

Meredith with her 12″ square patchwork tote

The other side of her bag with the how to sheet 

Time out on the weekend was spent heading to San Francisco to finally see the Circus Bella show. Missy did a circus camp at the beginning of the summer and the teachers were from Circus Bella and she really loved it. The show was part of a series of free shows and is perfect for a day out to the city. This was at Mission Bay just across from the Caltrain being super easy to get to!

Chilling out waiting for the show in the shade! 
Cat rescue on the fireman’s pole!

Post show the music was a bit loud so Missy hid somewhere for a while to get some peace and quiet!

This easy craft was created this week with the kids orphan socks and we found this craft in an old magazine and it is a fabulous idea for any old socks. This is Stripey the sock kitty! 
With Stripey the DIY sock kitty