Wicked in San Francisco

Thursday morning we woke up, grabbed a cup of coffee and hiked over to Grace Cathedral to look around.  I had visited there once before on a work trip, but it was so beautiful I wanted to go look again and I wanted Tim to see it too. 

After visiting Grace (and after some breakfast) we headed over to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which I had been dying to visit since we arrived in San Fran.  And it did not disappoint.  In fact, I think it might have been one of my top things we did.  They had two installations going--the first was in honor of thier 75th Anniversary as a museum and juxtaposed the story of the museum's history with what was going on in the San Francisco art scene at the time with key peices that were aquired in each major momment of the museums climb to international recognition.  It was a great way to "get to know" the museum and its collection. 

The second installation was Calder to Warhol (you can see that above-duh!) and was amazing.  I really love the pop art movement. It was also fun to see some of the peice I studied in school in the live! 

My favorite two pieces for the Calder to Warhol installation were these two Roy Lichtenstein peices.  To me they really sort of remind me of the same elements that make me love letterpress art work so much.   

After our time at the SFMOMA we grabbed lunch with one of T's cousins who lives with her family  the GVZs in the Bay Area.  She has the most adorable two year old on the planet!  Unfortunately we didn't get to meet her in person, but we did get to spend time with T's cousin who happens to be one of the smarter, more insightful people I've met. 

After lunch we did a bit of vegging out and resting because that night we had tickets to WICKED!  So awesome!  And you want to know what's crazy?  Without even talking to one another my parents had planned a vacation to Napa the same week we were in SF and had planned on coming into town for a few days before the headed home to see Wicked and do a bit of exploring.  So we got to see them for a yummy dinner and go to Wicked.  Afterwards we grabbed dessert at a little place around the corner from our hotel.

Beat LA (San Francisco: Day 3)

So here I go, picking back up on our vacation adventure! What a packed full of fun day and this is only what we did until mid-afternoon! 

First thing in the morning we woke up and went to Pier 39 to catch a little boat tour of the Bay.  It was a super touristy thing to do, but we wanted to see the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz but didn't want to give up all the time it woudl take to GO to either place.  So we decided to hop on the boat for a one hour tour that took us out to the bridge around Alcatraz and Angel Island and back to Pier 39.  I was actually surprised, it was really fun!  We got to see alot for one hour, it was informative without being overwhelming and it was not too crowded (we had a tip that it was way less crowded in the mornings--thanks!)

Then we hopped off the boat and scooted to the Giants game against the Dodgers.  As I mentioned before we didn't get to go when we originally planned, but we decided that we still wanted to go, since the park is gorgeous and overlooks the bay.  And it was a beautiful day!  Perfect for baseball (and by baseball I mean sitting outside and eating super unhealthy food--yum!)

After that we hiked back to Pier 39 to the Aquarium by the Bay, since we love going to aquariums about as much a zoos.  But I have to say, it was my least favorite place and wouldn't recomend it.  I don't know why, it just wasn't that awsome.  Maybe its because the aquarium wing of the California Academy of Science was so awesome or maybe becuase we were tired, but it was sort of meh.  So we headed back to our hotel for a rest before our evening activities. 

San Francisco: Day 2, Part 1

So after the excitement of our "first day" of vacation we decided to sleep in (but we were on Eastern time so we slept in and still woke up early--perfect!) and then get up grab breakfast and hit the city.  The first place I wanted to go was Golden Gate Park, most notably the deYoung Museum.  I love art museums--fun little fact about me, I was 3 hours short of an Art History minor in college and the reason I chose the university I attended was because of a dear friendship I had with an Religion in the Arts professor who mentored both myself and my husband in our young adulthood.  So art has been a major part of our lives for a long time so I was really excited to soak up what San Francisco had to offer. 

The deYoung collection did not disappoint.  I think one of the things that surprised me the most about the collection was how large their Americas and African art collections were.  But I think one of my favorite pieces was the Claes Oldenburg, Corridor Pin, Blue.  I had studied Oldenburg work in college and we try to get to every museum we have access to, I had yet to see any of his work in person.  I was so excited that I made husband stand in front of it while I snapped a picture (one of many times I said "oooh stand over there so I can get a picture...he's such a good sport)

Across the way from the deYoung is the California Academy of Sciences.  I hadn't done any research about it before our trip but it looked super cool so we headed over and checked it out and I am so glad we did!  It was the coolest science museum we had ever been to!  It has a aquarium, planetarium and four story rainforest!  Plus it had all sorts of other exhibits.  We learned so much and had so much fun, plus the food there was really yummy and healthy. 

One of the things that was really interesting about the California Academy of Sciences, was their roof--its a living roof!  It lets in cool air, lets out warm air, provides a habitat for native Northern California wildflowers, birds and bugs.  So cool! 

San Francisco: Day 1

So, to give you atiny break from the picture onslaught that is about to occur, I thought I would share a little about our "first day of vacation."  We woke up bright and early at 4am Eastern Time to get to the airport, park, ride the shuttle in from long term parking, get checked in and check our bag in time for our 6am flight to Detroit where we would then catch our flight to SFO and land in sunny California by 11:30am Western Time.  Ahhh!  In anticipation of our first day I had purchased tickets to the Giant's game against the Dodgers, because I knew it would make hubs really happy and the stadium overlooks the bay, which would make me really happy (truth be told, if they serve funnel cake I can be happy anywhere).

We arrive at the airport bleary-eyed at 4am to discover that some storms the night before had knocked out the radar at the airport for several hours, delaying, grounding and preventing flights from landing.  Apparently our plane that was supposed to take us to Detriot never even made it into Indy.  Bummer. 

I slap on my sweetest Southern charm, which really means that I was polite and patient and kind in the midst of alot of grumpy, sleepy customers and proceeded to tell the woman at the ticket counter that it was our aniversary trip and that I bought my husband baseball tickets for that night so could we please, please, please get there at a decent hour.  Bless her heart, I felt so bad for telling her all this because she worked and worked and looked and looked but the best thing she could find was a 1pm Eastern Time departing Indy flying us the JFK in New York and then taking us to SFO, landing at 8pm.  Sigh! 

Not to let the slight delay in travel rain on our parade I talked Tim into leaving the airport, to go home and take a nap and in the spirit of vacation going to our favorite breakfast place Cafe Patachou on the way back to the airport for our next flight.  Yum! 

So we arrive BACK at airport to discover that our flight has some mechanical problems, they finally get us boarded, back out of the gate and have ANOTHER mechanical problem, delaying us again.  So off we go to New York, on the exact opposite coast of where we want to be!  Eek! 

When we are somewhere over Pensylvania the pilot comes over the intercom and tells us that the same storm that messed up our first flight was currently over JFK and so they weren't recieving any flights, we were basically going to have to hang out at 35,000 feet for a while until the storms cleared. 

But wait it gets better...we hang out for so long in the air that we run out of gas, so the pilot comes back over the intercom and shared that we have to fly over to Allentown, PA for gas real quick, then we can hop back up into the air and hang out and wait some more.  But the pilot isn't so sure that we will get our spot back "in line" to land at JFK, we may have to kick it Kindergarten style and go to the back of the line because we had to hop out to get some gas.  Sweet.

So at this point we realize that there is no way that we are going to make it to our connecting flight from JFK to SFO, which is sort of ironic because we love vacationing in NYC and it was on the list of places to go, but instead we chose San Francisco because of the cooler weather and because we travel to NYC often enough. 

Anyhow, we land in JFK finally and of course we missed our connecting and our airlines put us on standby for a flight that would arrive in SFO around midnight.  They also informed us that our suitcase had somehow gotten there about 6 hours ahead of us (I guess it went ahead and saw the Golden Gate Bridge and grabbed a drink without us). 

Luckily we got on that flight and wearily landed in SFO a little after midnight.  Too tired to use our brains, after nearly 24 hours of being up with nothing more than short naps, we grabbed a cab and got to our hotel and crashed. 

Two awsome things happened in the midst of all of this.  First we made friends with our flight attendant Renee, on that too long flight to JFK.  We had the front seats of our little plane so as we sat circling and waiting, we faced Renee in her flight attendant's seat.  She was super sweet and even e-mailed us the next day to make sure we made it to our vacation.  I wish we had of asked her to take a picture of us sitting there so I would have it to capture this crazy day, but oh well!

The other awesome thing that happen is some thing I would have never expected, done or thought would ever happen to this little ol' gal from Oklahoma.  I got to see both oceans in one day!  I had the window seat on both flights and saw both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  I know people that fly from one coast to another regularly are probably like "no big deal, so what" but I never really traveled much besides to see family across the southwest and midwest growning up and have never really considered myself a world traveler (you have to leave the country to be that, right?) so this was really, really cool. 

So the first day of our vacation wasn't what we had planned, but it was fun because we got to spend it together, meet new people and do something we had never done before. 

vacation all i ever wanted

Well, its been quiet here for the past week and a half because we've been on VACATION!  Sorry you had to wait until now to find out, but its the internet and well, its public and we like our house not broken into, ya know? So anyhow, this spring we decided that we wanted to take a city trip this summer.  Not that we don't love the beach but we love alternating between really lazy beach vacations and exploring new cities. 

We didn't really have a particular reason for going to San Francisco.  Basically we thew out all the places we could go given the budget we had saved, narrowed it down to two or three cities, narrowed down the week we wanted to travel and then did our research on what was available in each city to do and how much it would cost to fly and stay.  So...that's how we ended with San Fran. 

Since we spent 6 days on vacation, I am going to break up all the excitement into multiple posts.  So...if you are interested in our vacation check back, if not, so sorry to bore you!