Easter Sunday in the Park

It was a bad night for me last night with my right knee spasming in pain. First real bad pain I have had in a long while, I dosed up on pain killers and hoped that it would settle down. Luckily it wasn't too bad this morning, so we decided to give San Fran a go. Once again catching the 'O' bus over the Bay Bridge into the heart of town. It was a beautiful morning, clear, little breeze and just a tad of haze. A perfect day for Easter Sunday.

Geoff being a bit concerned about how my knee would take another full on day of walking, suggested we catch the Trolley Bus out to the west coast of San Fran. For $1.50 each it took us right from West to East coast of the city ending up right on Ocean Beach. Not a particularly tempting beach...the sand was a grey colour. Now Geoff's intention was to walk up the boardwalk till we found a good Cafe, have a coffee looking at the crazies surfing in the murky, messy surf and then head back via Trolley Bus again. But when we got there we noticed a Windmill, so crossed the street to check out what it was. That led us to the start of another fabulous days walking in San Francisco.

Now this Windmill the largest of it's kind in the world bulit in 1905, was the start of the Golden Gate Park and this is no park like we have in Australia. This park is mammoth, stretching east to west it is 1017 acres of wonderland. Created in 1870 the site was an area of wild sand dunes that was out of the main city area, the creator got his inspiration from Central Park in New York. It's 1017 acres of lakes, ponds, flat grassy fields, hilly winding roads through Forest, a 9 hole golf course a large polo field, a football field, BBQ area's, ponds designed for remote control boat enthusiasts, a Bison park (yes real Bison and they are massive!!) plus endless areas of just remote beauty. The info says that it gets an average of 75000 people through it a weekend!!! Seriously! It was an incredible days walk. Geoff found himself in the old dude playing with his remote control tanker in one of the lakes. We ate Hot dogs while watching the paddle boats on another large lake. Then we wandered in bliss around the perfectly designed Japanese Tea Gardens full of Cherry Blossoms and shaped shrubs. I got to visit a wonderful Buddha statue, it was built in Japan in 1790 out of bronze and weighs 1300 kg and was donated to the Park after WWII. We walked out of the Tea Gardens and into the San Francisco de Young Fine Arts Museum. We spent an hour or so viewing incredible masterpieces of art, modern and past, beautiful pieces of glass art, some bizarre tribal artifacts and antique american heritage furniture.

Now with our dose of culture done, we felt it was time to hang out with the hippies in what is nicknamed the 'Hippie dome' a sloping area of lush green grass, where those free of spirit revel and enjoy themselves in the sun. So with the inner hippie let loose, we laid in the grass full of tiny white daisies and listened to the random group playing bluegrass up near the statue of Garfield. No not the cartoon cat...I'm not sure who he was, but will have to do some googling. After feeling refreshed by our laze in the sun we walked out of the park at the eastern end to find ourselves in the Haight-Ashbury area. Back in the mid-1960s, this was perhaps the most famous intersection in the world, a place where all the young people came from all over the world in search of love and peace. As quoted in the local guide:

'The district is famous for its role as a center of the hippie movement, a post-runner and closely associated offshoot of the beat movement, whose initiated and "beatific" youth swarmed San Francisco's "in" North Beach neighborhood two to eight years before the "Summer of Love" in 1967. Many of those who could not find space to live in San Francisco's north side found it in the quaint, relatively cheap and underpopulated Haight-Ashbury. The '60s era and modern American counterculture has been synonymous with San Francisco and the upper Haight neighborhood ever since'

Besides all that, it is full of streets and streets of those fabulous Victorian houses, duplex's and apartment buildings. The area just oozes charm and character. So... to totally melt into the scene we found a dusky, dark, moody Cafe to enjoy a latte and coffee cake, while listening to the hip music and pretending we were still in our youth!! sigh....sadly it was time to jump onto that Trolley Bus and head back to the Transit Centre and another 'O' Bus back home to Alameda. What a wonderful, relaxed perfect Easter Sunday in the Park. San Francisco, fastly becoming one of my favourite cities in the world of cities I've visited.

Happy Easter to you all at home in Oz. oh and Peace Out!