San Francisco, Part 2

This is probably my favourite picture that I took the whole trip, one of those that's a happy confluence of moments.  The Bay Bridge, fading into the ombre background, the pier cutting gently across the water.  The lamp in stark relief.  Even the walker at the peak of his stride.  More exciting for me was that I snatched the chance to snap this through the bus window at a brief traffic light, my lens pressed right up to the glass.

San Francisco was a gamut of such fleeting moments, now frozen in time.

There was a weird kind of fire in a glass case in the lobby of our hotel and it really fascinated me.  Fire is mesmerising in the dancing shapes it can create.  I was lucky enough to be able to freeze some of them.

At some point, we managed to give the kids a little bit of shopping time (and stole some for ourselves).  The buildings on the way to Westfield were quite beautiful.  Each time I looked at something with Victorian influence, I ached for England.  Despite everything that has happened (or maybe because of it), I left a big piece of my heart there.

In the mall, we ate a massive Cabo Chop salad, complete with a whole side of Roadhouse shoestring onions.  I just about died.  I sneaked off to do a little bit of shopping in Bath and Body Works and Vera Bradley afterwards, and felt like one of those American girls in the YouTube videos.

We took a walk down to the cable car stand after that, S in her beautiful metallic Melissa flats.  I'm not a big fan of the clunkier platforms, but I can definitely get on board with these.  

I have no idea what S and I are doing in this picture, but I kind of love it.  (Sidenote:  Awesome cowl sweater type thing from Uniqlo.  All my winter clothes were from Uniqlo including a delicious 210gram light down jacket that kept me toasty and could be compressed into the mass of a fat umbrella and thrown into a handbag.  Unbelievable.)

The sun started to set and we stood there and watched the trams trundle up onto the turntable in the gloaming.  We watched them whirr and turn and come and go, as a busker's bagpipes rose and fell behind us, eerie on the evening air. 

On the way down to the Fisherman's Wharf, the cable car sidled along pastel-coloured Victorian homes, their bay windows jutting on the sharply slanted streets.  The wharf was touched by the magic that graces all harbours; the water, the sky, all cool, all blue-scented and deep, all almost-glass water as far as the eye could see.

I recommend Boudin if you're looking for something a bit more fancy.  The service was decent, the oysters fresh and cold and satisfyingly savoury (if you're going to order something else let it be the Artichoke and Crab Dip).  There is a bakery downstairs that makes cute animal-shaped bread (Holy crocodile, Batman!) and shop that sells things like sea-salt caramel butter.

The next day, we got to tour Stanford.  Stanford is one of the biggest campuses in the world and I couldn't get over how the architecture, with its low, Spanish-style red roofs, looked like something out of Buffy (later I found out a lot of Buffy was actually filmed in UCLA).

The campus was sprawling and its buildings were beautiful but I didn't get the same sense of hallowed learning that I felt when I visited Oxford, GW or even Warwick.  Maybe it's different when you're actually a student, dragging your suitcase and a thousand dreams with you. 

Of note: the very first Google server ever, held together with lego.

S and I kept talking and giggling about very silly things, so I told her to look a little more reverent. 

I did a bit of dancing too.

So I wasn't completely buying Stanford, but the students loved it.  I could see it in their eyes as they took in the sights and sounds and the scent of freedom, could sense their eagerness for the richness of this world that was just about to unfold for them.  I felt so excited for them, and a little nostalgic.

On our last day in San Francisco, we went to my favourite place.  I'm a sucker for anything involving animals (that are not cockroaches) and I really enjoyed what I saw of the California Academy of Sciences.

It's a cross between the Underwater World, the Science Centre and the Natural History Museum, and I kept running around, snapping photos of everything.

The collection of frogs and sea creatures alone would've kept me there for a whole day.  I got to touch a sea urchin in the tide pool where an elderly curator showed me how they have tiny suckers on black, threadlike projections that catch food as it wafts slowly in the current.  He made me look at the teeth on the underside of one urchin and I shuddered violently.  It was like watching at a blind, groping creature out of Pan's Labyrinth.

 (That frog that looks like it's made of clay is absolutely real).

In the end though, the stingrays were my favourite exhibit.  They had a lagoon underneath a suspended wooden viewing platform and it was delightful watching them racing each other across the white sand with swiftly curling wings.

While these pictures look kind of sight-see-y, San Francisco was actually pretty damn hectic.  But I am grateful for the chance to travel, to experience something entirely new.  I'm thankful for the lessons I've learned about looking after students and travelling in large groups.

I enjoyed all the little things - getting to know the students, taking the pictures, feeling different, foreign, new.  I even enjoyed the complete change in temperature.  Another visit is definitely on the cards.

And hey, I got a massive kilogram bag of Reese's peanut butter cups out of the excursion.  Any excuse for more Reese's is excuse enough for me.