Rocks at Sunset

A cou­ple of week­ends ago, my mom and I headed over the moun­tains to Berke­ley (I’d been vis­it­ing her in Car­son City, NV for Christ­mas). There had been quite a bit of snow in the pre­ced­ing days, and although the much of it cleared by the time we set out, the roads weren’t in the great­est shape. We had to peri­od­i­cally merge into a sin­gle lane of traf­fic to make room for heavy-duty snow-clearing machines that were work­ing on push­ing back the walls of snow (which were 6–7 feet high in places). Snow and other traf­fic prob­lems made for a longer-than-normal drive. We arrived in Berke­ley Fri­day evening, and didn’t do much except have din­ner and hang out with our hosts — friends David and Francesca and their daugh­ter Maria.

On Sat­ur­day, we spent the day mainly shop­ping in Berke­ley. We made a trip to the orig­i­nal Peet’s Cof­fee and Tea, since I’d never been. We had lunch at Spenger’s, a seafood restau­rant and Berke­ley fix­ture that was family-owned until recently. Spenger’s is where I first tasted cala­mari, and I com­mem­o­rated this fact by eat­ing a big juicy cala­mari steak for lunch. We hit a vari­ety of inter­est­ing shops around town, includ­ing Black Oak Books, The Bone Room, Gen­ova Del­i­catessen, and Forrest’s Music, a dou­ble reed sup­ply company.

Cal­i­for­nia Acad­emy of Sciences

The whole gang (Francesca, David, Maria, Mom, and me) headed to Golden Gate Park in San Fran­cisco with the intent of vis­it­ing the new Cal­i­for­nia Acad­emy of Sci­ences (at left). By the time we arrived, how­ever, the line to merely get in the door was about 2 hours long. So, we decided to visit the adja­cent De Young Museum of Art instead. The museum had three spe­cial exhibits: Maya Lin’s Sys­tem­atic Land­scapes, a col­lec­tion of 20^th cen­tury Asian-American art, and the designs of Yves Saint Lau­rent. I par­tic­u­larly enjoyed the Maya Lin exhibit — it con­sisted of a vari­ety of sculp­tures based on maps and topog­ra­phy. The De Young’s per­ma­nent col­lec­tions were quite inter­est­ing, as well. They have quite a range of gal­leries, split pretty equally between tra­di­tional (Amer­i­can, African, and South Pacific) and mod­ern art forms.

Dusk

After leav­ing the museum and the park, we headed to the coast to watch the sun­set over Cliff House and the Sutro Baths. I took some time to play with long expo­sures of the sun set­ting behind some rocks off­shore (above) and the traf­fic below us (at right). Click any of the thumb­nails to view the gallery that includes these pho­tos as well as pics of some of the cooler things at the De Young.