Saturday, August 30, 2008

Day Four


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Enough said, I'm going to bed.

Edit: It would only be right to give a proper run down of Day Four (Friday 29th).

So the big plan was to rent a bike and ride around the city, and I did. I hadn't rode a bike in years, and never on the road... meh. The plan was to go close to the entrance to the bridge, but continue on down the Pacific Coast and then eastward through golden gate park. As it happened I came right up to the bridge entrance and then went the wrong way to effectively reverse the direction of my journey, this would be a costly mistake...

The day was sunny and perfect and the ride along the shore offered great dramatic views of the bridge. The bridge entrance is at the top of a hill and it was painful to leave it behind knowing that I would have to make the uphill journey again. I rode a long way, under the impression I was going the right way, until it all looked completely bizarre and there was no Pacific Ocean to be seen. After asking for directions to Golden gate park I eventually made it, and as with everything in San Fran: it's not as flat as it looks on the map.

I stopped at the de Young Museum of Fine arts for lunch but couldn't help but buy tickets to the galleries and the Chihuly exhibit. Dale Chihuly is a 'glass blowing artist' (my terminology) and the exhibition was friggin amazing, so much intricacy and detail and colour... I took a million photos (the best of which will be up on picasa). After the glass work, the rest of the museum was pretty avg, but I still went around and there some cool things. Overall, I spent close to 3 hours at the de Young and so had to gaps it towards the sea. (Across the road was the Academy of Sciences, I was gutted that it was closed for renovation).

Along the (downhill, yay!) ride to the coast a cold breeze started to waft over the land, and by the time I got to the coast... there was no coast. The mist had come in and it was wet and cold. It did help the cruel bike up to the bridge, but the bridge was in mist and I was pissed. I forgot to mention that about the time I left the de Young, my stomach had started to hurt (you guys already know where this leads) and at the bridge I was hurting pretty bad. So I cycled across, not seeing the city nor the tops of the towers. On the other side I had dinner near the ferry terminal, and then waited over an hour for said ferry back to SF. I got there with 15min before the return deadline, and had to cycle like mad to make it back on time.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That couldn't have been the distance you walked, could it :P