Fetteroll

We're headed for sort of a budget trip to San Francisco next week to
see a college Kat's interested in (Academy of Art University which
sort of sounds like a made up generic college name ;-).)

We have BART and our feet for transportation ;-)

Any suggestions on what we should see, or what we shouldn't miss?

Joyce

Sandra Dodd

I think you should go to Berkeley, and just get out and walk around
and walk into a residential neighborhood. The houses are really
pretty there. I don't know the names of the stations there, but
there's one in a neighborhood, and one by a big parking lot, and I
think one by the university (UC Berkeley). It's fun to go under the
bay in the dark and think of how deep and dark it is... unless that
would spook you, then don't.

Sandra

tracy

Hi~ We lived in the Marina area before we had kids...it is really
beautiful area, Chestnut Street has great reasonable resturants and
shops. If you go to that area you can walk to the palace of Fine Arts
and to the bay to get a good view of the Golden Gate Bridge. In that
same area is the Exploratorium (sp?) which is THE best science museum
I've ever been to!! Wow...Have fun, I'm envious! Tracy in SC




--- In [email protected], Fetteroll <fetteroll@...> wrote:
>
> We're headed for sort of a budget trip to San Francisco next week to
> see a college Kat's interested in (Academy of Art University which
> sort of sounds like a made up generic college name ;-).)
>
> We have BART and our feet for transportation ;-)
>
> Any suggestions on what we should see, or what we shouldn't miss?
>
> Joyce
>

Amy

I'll have to second the Exploratorium. I can't remember if it costs
anything, but you'll be pleased if you work it in to your budget.
It's so fun!

~Amy




--- In [email protected], "tracy" <tracyliebmann@...>
wrote:
>
> Hi~ We lived in the Marina area before we had kids...it is really
> beautiful area, Chestnut Street has great reasonable resturants and
> shops. If you go to that area you can walk to the palace of Fine
Arts
> and to the bay to get a good view of the Golden Gate Bridge. In
that
> same area is the Exploratorium (sp?) which is THE best science
museum
> I've ever been to!! Wow...Have fun, I'm envious! Tracy in SC
>
>
>
>
> --- In [email protected], Fetteroll <fetteroll@> wrote:
> >
> > We're headed for sort of a budget trip to San Francisco next week
to
> > see a college Kat's interested in (Academy of Art University
which
> > sort of sounds like a made up generic college name ;-).)
> >
> > We have BART and our feet for transportation ;-)
> >
> > Any suggestions on what we should see, or what we shouldn't miss?
> >
> > Joyce
> >
>

Pam Tellew

Hey, Sandra, next time you're in Berkeley, come by my house.

And, Joyce, the offer still stands for you guys too!

Berkeley is the place to come and eat, home of Alice Waters, and much
delicious, less expensive fare. Also, there are the
remnants-of-the-60s sights. And our humble abode, which is about 10
houses north of the Berkeley line.

There are a couple of art schools over here on this side of the bay
too. An older one, California College of Arts and Crafts. And one
that sounds intriguing to me, a digital arts one, called Ex'pression,
http://www.expression.edu/ .

As for San Francisco, I'd go to the Embarcadero BART station on
Saturday, and cross the street to an amazing farmers market and the
extravagant food hall at the Ferry Building. You may not be able to
afford much but what you eat will be delicious and you'll get some
idea of this area's passions about fresh, local food.. Then you can
walk or rent bikes or any number of bizarre vehicles or just take an
old fashioned trolley down the embarcadero and enjoy the views. Pier
39 and Fishermans wharf are ultra touristy but Pier 39 has all the
sea lions that hang out there and at Fisherman's wharf, there's a
place that has all these cool old arcade games from the old Playland
at the Beach. It's called Musee Mechanique,
http://www.museemechanique.org/ And in the Cannery, one of those old
factories-gone tourist shops, near the shop that only sells socks,
there's the coolest musical instrument store, Lark in the Morning
(they have a great catalog too), where you can try everything.

Also from the Embarcadero BART, you can take a cable car which I
still love even though only tourists ride them. The crowds at
Embarcadero tend to be smaller than the crowds at Powell Street for
the cable car. The cable cars have fabulous views from the tops of
hills, so try to be where you can see out. The cable car museum is
on the route and free and really cool if anyone is into transit or
local history. It's amazing they've been running theses things the
same way for over a hundred years.

We also love Zeum, which is right in the middle of town. Maybe we
could do that with you, cause it's fun with a group? There you can
do claymation, video production, perform and record kareoke, do
computer graphics, an, my favorite, play on a life size labyrinth
(the tilting kind with a metal ball). And that's right near the SF
Museum of Modern Art and bunches of other stuff.

Then there's Golden Gate Park with a few days worth of stuff to
do. That would mean a bus ride from BART, but not hard. And renting
bikes there would be great cause you could see a lot more that
way. The Conservatory of Flowers is way cool and I think the
Japanese Tea Garden is fun, but touristy.

Or...you can take the ferry across the bay to Alameda (where we're
having our unschoolers park day on Friday!) or Oakland. If you go to
Oakland, you can walk to a real Chinatown, not the more touristy San
Fransisco one. You could take BART back to SF.

Hope we get to see you!

PamT.

Paula Sjogerman

On Jul 27, 2007, at 3:44 PM, Fetteroll wrote:

> We have BART and our feet for transportation ;-)


I second all the recommendations so far. SF and Berkeley are both
great walking cities. And all the public trans is great, not only
BART. In the city, there's buses, cable cars, and trams. I'd get a
good transit map and then just pick some neighborhoods and wander.
Chinatown, North Beach, the Mission, even downtown and Union Square,
all good. It's fun just to look at the architecture and the
topography because it's so different from the East Coast. Berkeley
has Moe's, one of the all time best used book stores ever. It's right
on the main drag near the campus, Telegraph Ave.

Paula, big city walker

Pam Tellew

OK, my husband Eric weighed in here too:

If you are bikers, rent a bike and go across the Golden Gate Bridge
and to the west on the Marin side of the bridge up to Hawk Hill for
spectacular views and the just-beginning raptor migration south. A
strenuous ride. (Easy to do by car, as well.)

He also says, if you come from landlocked places, you gotta see the
ocean. Taking the 38 Geary Limited bus all the way west through the
city out to Ocean Beach would be a tour in itself. You can catch it
at Montgomery BART. You won't have a tour guide but you'll hear four
or five different languages!

And he says Alcatraz is great, as does everybody else who's ever
been. I've never done it! And Eric hadn't until last year even
though he's a native to Berkeley.

Sandra Dodd

-=-And he says Alcatraz is great, as does everybody else who's ever
been. I've never done it! And Eric hadn't until last year even
though he's a native to Berkeley.
-=-

Alcatraz is great.
Absolutely, even if just for the ferry ride. The ferry has a museum
downstairs, kind of, a history of how the ferry engines were
developed. "Walking foot engine," kind of a giant wankle engine, one
piston... And the island itself is cool, and the buildings, and the
flora, and the buildings and the stories!!!

Sandra

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Sandra Dodd

-=-Hey, Sandra, next time you're in Berkeley, come by my house.-=-

Ah, it's been a long time. I used to go to SCA board meetings when
they were all in the Bay area, late 70's, early 80's. I was there
three or four times a year, in Berkeley or Milpitas, doing what
touristing I could in the single free afternoon of three or six days
of work on meeting prep and then preparation of minutes (18 pages,
give or take six), and then I'd print and mail them when I got
home... all Pre-momhood. Not the most medieval part of the SCA,
and it's all changed now anyway. But I was fortunate to get to visit
there so often.

Sandra

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Meghan Anderson-Coates

Hi Joyce,

You can get a bus pass (it lets you have unlimited travel on the buses and cable cars) for a really reasonable rate. You can buy them for a day or multiple days. Last time I was there we got them in our hotel lobby's store. Here's a link to the visitor passports - http://www.sfmta.com/cms/mfares/passports.htm
Seeing as the cable cars cost $5 each way, this is really a bargain!

I would go wander around the Haight Ashbury area (my old stomping grounds and very like berkeley <g>) and from there, you can go into Golden Gate Park. The Japanese Tea Garden, the Arboretum, and the de Young Musuem (highly recommended if you're into art!) are all close to the Stanyan St entrance to the park. Also, if you want more art...SF MOMA musuem is worth a trip (it's just south of Market St) and The Legion of Honor are great places to go. It will probably take a few buses to get to The Legion, but imo, it's worth it. Here's another link to the de Young and The Legion - http://www.thinker.org/

Hope you have a great time!
We're off to Florida on Monday for a couple of weeks and then onto the HSC conference shortly after we get home, so even though I don't post much, I'll not be reading either :-)




Meghan

"Everything Is Possible"
~ Deepak Chopra


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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Fetteroll

Thank you everyone!

I'm feeling less overwhelmed by the possibilities. :-)

Looks like I may get to meet up on Wednesday (tomorrow!) with Betsy
and Pam T and Robyn Talman (though we may have met but I won't
remember until I see :-)

Joyce

Fetteroll

Hi all!

Thank you so much for all the help. It gave us great places to start.

In retrospect we should have figured out the bus system in addition
to BART. We did a lot of walking. A lot. :-) But we got to experience
San Francisco up close and personal in a way we wouldn't have otherwise.

We saw Chinatown three times on the way to various places and only
got to see the Golden Gate Bridge from a distance ;-) The wait for
the trolleys was way too long (though supposedly it's less at
Embarcadero but we never got off there) but we saw them plenty! We
got to walk up Lombard Street. Japantown (since Kat has a big
interest in manga and anime and Japan in general.) Bought lots of
manga and tea on the trip. :-)

Apparently Alcatraz needs reservations 3 months in advance during the
summer, at least for the National Park Service ferry (I think it
was). Anyway we only had one day totally free and my sister isn't an
early riser ;-) so we didn't get to go. We saw that from a distance
too :-)

I did get to meet Betsy and Pam and Robyn (while Kat and Carl were at
an Oakland Athletics game). We all recognized each other immediately
even though we hadn't met before. :-) And they showed me around
Berkeley. I took my family over there on Saturday and was able to
show them around like I knew what I was doing :-)

I think the thing that struck me the most -- at least the thing I
didn't expect since obviously the hills are the most prominent
feature of SF! -- are the variety of trees. We have maybe 4 basic
varieties that dominate. There seem to be dozens of different trees
in the parks. And the weather! It was tough coming back to hot humid
Boston. (Though since those first couple of days back it's been
really nice here.)

Thanks for all the suggestions!

Joyce