San Francisco hiking

I had such a happy last weekend in SF with a visitor from nearby!

Megan came up to see me on Friday night. We kept it chill on Friday, just grabbing a couple drinks and catching up on all the important things. But it wasn’t a late night - we had a big day planned for Saturday!

Since we’ll be hiking for many days in New Zealand in just a few short weeks, we decided that getting some hiking and endurance practice was a good idea. Our plan was to walk over the the Golden Gate Bridge (about 2 hours from the hotel), across the bridge, and then through the Marin Headlands. As with the best adventuring, it didn’t go exactly like that!

Even though we had lots of chatting the night before, there was still much to discuss, so as we started out from the hotel, we weren’t 100% paying attention to our path, and we definitely didn’t take a direct route toward our destination. When we emerged from the buildings of downtown, we ended up much closer to the Oakland Bay Bridge than the Golden Gate Bridge. So we decided to just stick alongside the bay and make are way along the water to get to our destination.

 

It turned out to be a great decision, because of course it was beautiful.

And there was LOTS going on that weekend. As we soon learned, it was Fleet Week, which meant that lots of ships were in the bay and there were general festivities going on all weekend. One of the biggest festivities was an all-day airshow. The Blue Angels were there, as well tons of other cool planes and demonstrations.

We made our way along the bay, through Fishermans Wharf, the Marina Green, and Chrissy Field.

Finally, we made the last climb up to the bridge!

Our walk across the bridge felt great after being in the city! The breeze was perfect - not too strong - and there was so much going on in the bay, the 1.2 mile walk didn’t feel like anything!

We’d planned to hike more through the Marin Headlands after we crossed the bridge, but our morning detour meant we’d spent more time and energy than we’d planned to start our hike! So we just had a break and a snack before heading back across the bridge. We just so happened to time our walk back while the airshow as kicking off properly, so there were lots of jets flying over as we made our way back.

Back in the city, people were camped out wherever they could fit on rooftops to take in the show!

All up, we ended up walking about 13 miles during the day, so we decided on an early dinner in the Mission. And we were heads down, lights out by 9:30!

A walk through the Marina

Last week I stayed in the Marina District. This was a lovely area along the bay. It wasn’t particularly close to the office. I happened to be in San Francisco during Dreamforce, which is a conference that brings about 100,000 salespeople to the city. This meant that it was extra hard to find a hotel room, and also that there was extra nerdy skywriting going on!

 

 

Fun sidenote for the week, I got to visit the Pinterest office. I really thought for sure that they would be wanting to do some of my DIY pins with me, but it was all boring software developer talk. The office was pretty cool inside, though. One of the reception desks was an actual car tuned into a desk - so it looked like the receptionist was sitting at the wheel of the car. 

 

 

Our San Francisco office is pretty cool too though. The kitchen and food is even more fun than the Sydney one! For lunch they do a thing called Eat Club, which is a Bay Area food service startup. Every morning you log into the Eat Club website and pick from 12-15 choices from local cafes & restaurants for your lunch for the day. Then it's delivered to the office around noon, and you pick up your salad, sushi, pizza, sandwich, or whatever you ordered for the day. It's a bit over the top, especially when there are so many disadvantaged people literally right outside the office door. But it's status quo for tech offices there. And of course office has plenty of other fun things going on - gotta compete with places like Pinterest for talent.

 

 

 

I picked the warmest, sunniest day of the week and made sure I left the office right on time to do some exploring of Marina. So I had a couple hours of daylight to take a walk along the bay and watch the sunset. 

 

First I walked through the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre. I had never seen it in person before, and it was so lovely and peaceful! It felt like I was miles away from the city… 

 

  

Then I walked down to the actual marina and through the Marina Green. It was a beautiful walk, and the sunset was starting to look amazing, so I took many many pictures!

 

It was such a lovely mid-week escape from the office!

 

Angel Island

I’ve been so lucky with the weather during my trip to San Francisco! Indian summer is in full swing here, and there’s only been one really rainy, gray day. Unfortunately, this means that all the clothes I packed aren’t exactly what I need, but I will never complain about the weather being too nice! 

This past weekend another beautiful day was forecast. So I decided to get out of the city for a while, which it turns out, was exactly what I needed after my week in the loud, smelly, dirty city!

 

I set my alarm and headed out to walk down to Pier 41. I cut through Chinatown, which was just starting to get going for the day. Lots of produce vendors were unloading their trucks and filling up their stores with fresh veggies. 

 

 

Down at the Pier, it was early enough that there were barely any tourists around. I had a little bit of time to kill after I bought my ferry ticket, so I walked over to see the sea lions. I love those guys!

 

   

 

 

And then it was time to catch my ferry to Angel Island! The ferry just left the city a couple times in the morning, and then returned from the island a couple times in the afternoon. So I really really wanted to make sure I got one of the ferries coming back! There were lots of families getting on the ferry with campaign equipment, so I figured at the very worst, I could try to become friends with these people and share a tent overnight. =D

 

 

The ferry ride was absolutely beautiful!

 

Goodbye, San Francisco!

   

Goodbye, Bay Bridge!

Hello Alcatraz!

Hello Angel Island!

 

I wasn’t sure what to expect on the island, but I learned some things before I even got off the ferry! Angel Island was used extensively as a detention center for immigrants, particularly during the period with Chinese immigrations were outlawed in the US. It was also used as a deployment center for troops during the World Wars, so it has a lot of history. For Chinese immigrants it’s not necessarily a happy history, so there was a tour group on the boat that was doing a “sojourn” to trace their ancestors journey to America. They had music and a ceremony on the boat, and then I saw them around the island visiting the different areas that were meaningful to them. 

 

Once I got the island, I set off on the perimeter loop. It’s a 6 mile path around the island, and there were beautiful views the entire way!

 

 

 

 

There were also quite a few historic buildings from the island’s previous lives. 

 

A church from the days of soldiers on the island

An old housing building from the immigration detention days

 

And I saw some island deer, which I wasn’t expecting. I think I was more startled by them than they were by me. 

 

 

It was just a beautiful day, and it was wonderful to get out of the city! Oh, and just to make it clear, I caught my ferry and was not stranded on the island for the night!