Califotos II

Monday: How lucky was I to be sipping a Blue Bottle latte, perusing the drool-inducing local produce, artisanal cheese, bread, and various other food shops of the Ferry Terminal, whilst everyone else was just starting their workweek? Fine weather for a ferry, but this trip, I wouldn’t make it to the East Bay. I needed me some Chinatown. Through the financial district to Chinese bazaar shops, a kite shop...and besides the alleyway fire I witnessed, so many amazing smells.Then to City Lights (where like a good tourist I bought beat: Ferlinghetti’s Coney Island of the Mind) and the Vesuvio, ohh yeah. The afternoon: Lombard Street’s curves, a quick stop at Fisherman’s Wharf and Ghirardelli Square, then on to Chrissy Field for a hazy sunset, and the Palace of Fine Arts after dark.Tuesday: First Tuesday of the month means free admission at city museums! Down to the MoMA (between special exhibitions and disappointing overall…yes, the people who told me not to go here were right), then up to the Legion of Honor (European permanent collection, two special exhibitions: Cartier jewelry and forensic reconstruction of mummies, an organ recital in the atrium, and a phenomenal view outside).
Now, if only I could get a drink at the Toronado before every flight I take. Eerily empty plane from ORD to MSN...I shudder to think of my carbon footprint.Perhaps it would be a good transition for me to live in a city with a Japantown, plus a phenomenal public transportation system, when I return to the U.S.?