Wednesday May 13, 2014

A great cycle ride today. The sun was out, the wind was at our backs and the hills were manageable until we hit Daly City. There were some interesting sights on the way to San Francisco.

Not sure why you would build a house here!

Of course if you need extra luggage space in your sports car, you can always get a matching trailer.

We went through another tunnel (1.5 kms). There was a wide shoulder and only a single lane for traffic. Even though it was a long tunnel, I felt relatively safe because of the wide shoulder. The tunnel itself was well lit and the cars did not race through as if they were Formula 1 cars.

On the other side of the hill, we noticed that the other entrance was reduced to one lane (no shoulder). I am glad I wasn’t heading southbound.

The hill at Daly City was a 12% grade. I walked the hill and Ralf of course managed to cycle all the way to the top, I still do not know how he does it.

When we got to Leslie and Jerry’s house, Leslie told us that a song was written about Daly City – “Little boxes, little boxes and they are all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same”. Who knew that we would see the \”little boxes\” made famous by this song.

We got to Leslie and Jerry’s house at around noon. They had soup ready for us and we were able to get settled in and have a shower.

They then offered to take us for a drive around the city. We got to see some great places, that we would not have seen without their insight on the City.

We really enjoyed driving through the San Francisco Golden Gate Park. Leslie’s favourite place is down by the fort and the view of the Golden Gate Bridge from here is fabulous.

 

We parked the car and had a short walk.

From the parking area we walked  to the Palace of Fine Arts Park, which is a favourite of both Jerry and Leslie’s.

I can understand why, we had a lovely walk around the park.

We spotted blue herons, there was a heronry with three babies clacking away. The most interesting bird was a Black Crown Night Heron.

This juvenile black crown night heron sat there while Ralf got closer and closer taking its photos. It only flew away when a small dog ran towards it.

The Palace and grounds were designed by Bernard Maybeck. Maybeck’s theory was “that as trees and plants grow so quickly in California, Californians are wasting their finest source of beauty if they do not combine landscape with building”.

He certainly knew what he was talking about with regards to the design and building of this lovely area.

After we had our walk, they drove us downtown and pointed out buildings and areas that we could visit tomorrow.

We were hungry when we got back to their house, we had stopped at Safeway to buy some wine for dinner and we had a lovely meal of salmon, veges and salad.  We had a great conversation with them.  We are staying with a really nice couple.

A lovely sunset to finish of a great day.