Saturday and Sunday I did have help exploring San Francisco: Liz was my partner in crime…er…wandering.  She’s also the only one, so far, to figure out where my banner came from:

Although to be fair, she was the only one with me at the gardens.

While wandering somewhat aimlessly around Golden Gate Park we decided to try and find the Japanese Tea Garden.  We did an okay job of reading the maps.  Just okay.  I wont say fantastic, because we may have taken a wrong turn or three, but we did get there eventually and paid our way inside.

Fortunately my camera is waterproof–which, at times, does make up for the fact that it doesn’t take the highest quality pictures in the world.  This was one of those times.  It rained almost the entire time I was in SF, and most of the time we were in the park, but the gardens were still beautiful, despite the crap-tacular weather.  One dedicated artist actually sat at the side of a pond (on a bag to save her pants from getting wet) drawing through the weather.  I was impressed.  I think I would have returned to draw on a less soggy day, but I can definitely appreciate the dedication.

There’s a tea house at the center of the gardens.  I suppose there has to be a tea house located in a “tea garden”.  You can see a corner of it in the upper left hand corner of the photo cluster.  This one was open air with a few tables and a counter top running around most of the area.  It overlooks a big pond, a nice little feature that lets you appreciate the scenery while sipping on green tea.  We appreciated the chance to warm up after walking around for so long in the December rain.

The gardens were first created in 1894 for the California Midwinter International Exposition. The original gardens, set up as a “Japanese Village”, spanned only about an acre.  After the fair closed, Makoto Hagiwara, a Japanese landscape architect, took over the care of the gardens, eventually expanding them to five acres.  Hagiwara and his family lived there until 1942 when they were forced to move to internment camps.  When the war was over they weren’t allowed to return.

I believe you’re allowed to climb on the drum bridge.  It looked like a terrible idea in the rain.  Walking around was a million times simpler.

My one good photo of Liz.

We did explore more of Golden Gate Park than just the Japanese Tea Gardens.  I have  quite a few pictures on my camera of our cataloging of random plants we saw and tried our best to identify.  I am not good at identifying herbs and things; that’d be Liz’s area of expertise…or at least she knows a lot more than me.

And, in case anyone was worried, we did hop on a bus (or two…and maybe a  trolley…but we hopped on so many buses and trolleys that I’ve lost count) and make our way out to Golden Gate Bridge.  We only walked about halfway out, but with as much walking as we did that weekend, I was quite alright with just seeing it.  Of course, it was still cold and gray as you can probably infer from the photos.

We didn’t visit Chinatown, but instead checked out Japantown where I excitedly bought bento supplies, dorayaki, and manga that I can’t actually read.  The Japanese bookstore was fantastic–if only I could read Japanese.  Their manga selection was enormous.  And I ate the second best bowl of udon that I’ve ever eaten in my life (not in the bookstore…at a restaurant in the Japan Center).  Sorry Japantown, you were close, but Sushi Avenue still wins the udon contest.

Before we left I took another photo.

If you read last post you’ll remember my wonderful Rosie the Riveter pic…I wasn’t lying when I said my only pictures were taken in things.  I tried to get Liz in there too, but she gave me the stink eye when I suggested she stand in the samurai cut out and we get someone to take the picture.  Sometimes you have to know when not to challenge the stink eye, and this was one of those occasions.  I do have some other photos of Liz and Kevin, but they were really good at closing their eyes, so I’ll keep those to myself.

Have a great Memorial Day guys!

(P.S. Hopefully within the next week I’ll have a chance to tweak my domain name so that it’s a little less…uh…awkward…we’ll see how that goes, though.)