Sunday, April 12, 2009

What We Did On Our Spring Vacation...

We took some time in the last week of March to go exploring in San Francisco, visiting new neighborhoods, museums, and watching live music performances.

We started our vacation by visiting the Float Matrix. Float Matrix is a center for floatation which uses a sound- and light-proof pod in which you float effortlessly on the surface of 10 in. of water saturated with 800lbs of medical grade Epsom salt and 100 million year old Himalayan salt. The benefit of floatation is to approach a deep state of relaxation. We certainly felt relaxed and peaceful after an hour of floating. Check them out on the web at: http://www.floatmatrix.com/genesis/.

On Monday we rented a car and headed to Redwood City for a round of mini-golf and to pick up some gardening supplies. In the afternoon, we planted tomatoes, peppers and then repotted our goji berry plants. That evening, Sascha invited us for homemade vegan pizza at his apartment, where Lily joined us. After dinner, we walked over to The Elbo Room to support Sascha’s friend Kate’s CD launch party.



The following evening we caught another music show, this time at the Great American Music Hall, featuring The Dave Rawlings Machine (“The Machine” is just David Rawlings and Gillian Welch playing under a different name rather than as simply “Gillian Welch”). The show was fantastic, one of the best we’ve ever seen. We could really feel the chemistry between David and Gillian in the audience floor. We’ve seen them in the past, at The Bridge School Benefit Concert in 2006, but to see them up close felt really special.

On Wednesday, we started our latest sewing projects: his and her yoga pants. Nowhere near perfect, we thought these were a good starting point for sewing our own clothes. The contestants on Project Runway have nothing to fear (the piping on the left leg of the orange pants stops 7 inches short of the top – oops!) but we have already received orders from Pia, Lily and Sascha.





On Thursday, we woke up early to check out San Francisco’s hottest museum, The California Academy of Science. Unfortunately, there was a lot of school trips to the museum that day so there were kids running around everywhere. The lines were too long for the Rainforest and Planetarium but we had a great time exploring the living roof and the Philippine corals and fish in the basement aquarium. The building itself was very green and thus, very cool.





On Saturday, we walked. It had been a few months since our last neighborhood exploration and we had been saving Telegraph Hill, Coit Tower and the Filbert Street Steps for a day when we had nothing but free time. We took the F train to Jones Street and walked around the back streets of North Beach up to Coit Tower. The walk to the tower smelled lovely as eucalyptus trees paved both sides of the path. Afterwards, we descended via the Filbert Street Steps, all 436 steps down from Filbert Street to Montgomery Street as a passing tour guide announced to her group. These stairs provided the backdrop for the film The Parrots of Telegraph Hill. Though we didn’t see any parrots on our walk, we heard them squawking and moving about in the trees overhead. We ended up walking close to four hours that day before making our way home.







On Sunday, Eric and Mer invited us to a picnic, and we drove first to Baker Beach and then to the Conservatory of Flowers where we picnicked in front of beautiful flowers of yellow, pink & purple. Eric and Mer prepared a lovely vegan meal for us, and it was wonderful to eat amongst beautiful flowers and friends. We even drummed a bit, with Eric accompanying on the didgeridoo. As we sat in the sun and felt the grass beneath our feet, we couldn’t think of a better way to end our vacation.