More Bay Area exploration

After rather a long drive from the Sierra Nevada, we finally arrived at San Francisco airport, where we were dropping off the car. At the airport, we had the chance to have a quick coffee and catch up with Aurelien and Julie, who were catching their flight back to France, having also visited Gilles and Valerie (our schedules were just such that our paths didn’t cross until now). They had done a pretty cool “western US” road trip (taking in Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, San Diego and Los Angeles), and from the sound of things they’d had a fantastic time. After waving our good-byes to them, we made our way back to Sausalito.

We started Saturday with a quick visit to San Francisco. Our first stop was at the de Young museum, located in Golden Gate Park. It’s a rather interesting museum hosting an impressive and varied collection, including a fair bit of American art, but also a really impressive collection of art from Asia and the Pacifics. Pretty impressive stuff. There was also a temporary exhibition on Jean-Paul Gauthier, which was actually surprisingly interesting. I can’t say I expected to end up in an exhibition about fashion; oh well… The views from the rooftop over San Francisco and Golden Gate Park are pretty impressive as well.

Our cultural appetite sated, it was time to sate our culinary appetites – and what better place for that than Mel’s Diner? We discovered this lovely little nostalgic diner, decorated with memorabilia from the 50’s and 60’s, during our last visit to San Francisco, and naturally we had to pay a visit there again… A replica of Mel’s Diner was used as a location for George Lucas’ movie American Graffiti. The food is of the honest diner variety, and reasonably priced. I like the place.

During the afternoon, we explored the Marine Headlands, a beautiful piece of Californian landscape, located just next to Golden Gate bridge, near Sausalito. The views from there towards Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco are simply stunning. We also visited the Marine Mammal Centre, a kind of hospital for marine mammals (mostly harbor and elephant seals). A rather interesting place to visit…

We spent the rest of the afternoon chilling out at the nearby beach, checking out the surfers taking on the big waves, and just enjoying the nice weather…


In the evening, we were meeting up for dinner with Isabelle and Carlol in Sausalito. Isabelle is a good friend of ours from France, who is passing through San Francisco on her way to Seattle, where she’s attending a wedding. Carol is a friend of Isabelle’s, whom I had the pleasure of meeting over in Guildford, where we used to live. Carol (who lives up in Santa Rosa, not too far away) had booked a very nice seafood restaurant for the occasion. It was a great night out, fantastic to catch up with Isabelle, and great to see Carol again.

The next day, it was sadly time for me to say bye-bye to Mathilde, who was heading back to France… I was staying for work for a few days longer, though, so still had the Sunday to kill, after picking up my rental car at the airport. The plan was to meet up with Isabelle and Carol for lunch in Oakland, but since I had a couple of hours to kill before that, I made my way to nearby Berkley. Berkley is, of course, famous for its university, one of the best ones in the USA. Berkley is also famous for its political dissidents – people had very strong opinions about the Vietnam War here, for example.

I really liked the campus area, it’s pretty much exactly how you imagine a university campus. Pompous stone buildings, big libraries, greenery, and an interesting mix of students was all there to be seen. After a brief stroll around there, I made my way to Telegraph Avenue, which is kind of the main street crossing the most “student y” part of Berkley. It was a pretty cool place, I was positively surprised to find some of that famous hippie spirit alive in this part of town. Plenty of old and young hippies, students, dodgy-looking characters, and interesting shops to be found…. (herb shops, second hand record shops, book shops, that sort of thing…).

After my quick visit to Berkley, I made my way to nearby Oakland for our scheduled lunch. Oakland has a bit of a bad reputation, so is not on the usual California tourist trail, but from what I’d read about it, it seemed like a place worth a visit – and since Carol actually has a house there, this was pretty much the perfect occasion.


So we made our way to Jack London Square, the redeveloped port area. As you may have guessed, Jack London was an Oakland resident for some time – so we decided to make our way straight to Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon – a regular haunt of Mr. London’s. It’s a brilliant little bar, full of cool memorabilia, but the crowd is, somewhat surprisingly, mostly made up of locals rather than tourists. After a drink at this historic landmark, we made our way for a rather late and hurried lunch.


And then it was time to bid my farewells to Isa and Carol, as I had a colleague to pick up at San Francisco airport…. That brought an end to our fantastic holiday, then… To summarize the past few weeks – it was great. We will surely be back!