The San Francisco Vacation Part 3

Friday morning arrived and it seemed we had already experienced the adventures of a full vacation. We ate breakfast at the hotel and headed out late in the morning. Off to San Francisco. Along the way we passed through Gilroy, the self proclaimed garlic capital of the world. We ended up taking the 101 up into the city.

We had no destination in mind, other than the hotel, so we just headed to the city around the Moscone Center, a place I've been many times for conventions. We headed to the Metreon food court, for no other reason than I knew it was there.
I had some great barbecue and Jacki and Darian had an asian noodle type thing. I guess we were a little stir crazy after a morning of driving and for some reason we decided to take some goofy pictures with our "cool" faces. Judge for yourself. At least I got a "MySpace" picture out of it.



By this time it was mid-afternoon and our next destination was the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). Jacki and I went to the NY MOMA back in 2001 and that ended up being one of the highlights of that trip, so we thought we'd give the SF one a try. The musuem was quite large and had exhibits ranging from historical, to some things that left you wondering why was it even in there.

The piece that immediately left you wondering was a white canvas, titled "untitled". I liked to call it "unstarted". Then to top that there was another white canvas with a green border right next to it. At least that artist got farther than the previous one. Needless to say it was categorized as minimalist. Yeah right!

The pieces I enjoyed were the Warhol and Salvador Dali pieces. They had a historical exhibit of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The pictures of devastation were unbelieveable, as were the quality and beauty of the pictures from so long ago. One of the photographers of the time hoisted up a camera off a kite and was able to take bird's eye pictures of San Francisco from 1500-2500 feet off the ground. Remarkable views of the city and a perspective you wouldn't expect to get from 100 years ago.

We spent a couple of hours at the museum. It was interesting that the things the three of us were interested in looking at differed quite a bit. I liked one half of the surreal exhibits but hated the others and Jack and Darian liked the exact opposites on the surreal exhibit floor.

After the museum we walked back up to Union Square. Jacki And Darian got some drinks at the Coffee Bean. We walked around and went into a couple of stores. By this time it was starting to get into the evening so we ended up eating an early dinner. We ate at a little Italian place, one of my favorites in San Francisco, called Puccini and Pinetti. I can never remember quite how to get there so we wandered aimlessly trying to find it. In the end we found it and were able to get seated. Dinner was a hit. I think Jacki and Darian both loved it.

Next destination was our hotel 25 miles south in Newark, California. It wasn't close but the price was right. And Darian and us had separate rooms which makes things a little easier. We called it an early night anticipating the long day ahead on Saturday.

Here is our complete journey mapped out. See Yahoo Map.