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Saturday November 20, 2010
China Beach and Lands End
We take a weekend off in SanFrancisco.
Having had fabulous holiday weather ("for the time of year" - as the natives kept reminding me but which I took entirely for granted), the predictions for the weekend were for heavy rain. However, on our arrival, the day was beautiful - breezy as usual in SF, but lovely. We visited Lands End and China Beach, where I could not resist a paddle. The sea had one lone swimmer, but I did not envy him his bracing experience.
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We had a light lunch at the Cliff House - we could not get into the restaurant but in fact that suited us better because it turned out they had "bar snacks" which meant a proper cafe style lunch (as opposed to an inappropriately large meal). The Cliff House has burned down a couple of times in its early history, and when rebuilt around 1909 it was in neo-classical style, not the amazing and wonderful Victorian edifice that preceded it.
The Sutro baths were part of the same development - to my amazement built in the 1890s. I was going to embed a YouTube clip here - but there were so many good ones, I simply refer you to these:
- a 1958 film clip from "The Line Up" where the baths (then an ice rink) were used as a set;
- a short documentary on the baths, (again interesting very early footage of them in use); and
- a brief profile on the history of Sutro Baths.
This is just the sort of place that interests both of us - in history and style. Sad that none of the amazing architecture of the baths survive, (always too expensive to maintain "working" buildings that no longer pay their own way).
In the late afternoon, before checking in to our hotel, we found our way to Imagine Knit - a lovely yarn store on 18th and Sanchez. We spent some happy hours browsing books and yarn, and finally bought some absolutely fabulous lace-weight yarns that we don't really need. Perfect.
We had parked on a residential side street that seemed to be almost vertical, which was quite something even taking into account SF's reputation in this area; the cars were parked sideways on, and we puzzled over how the residents got their cars into their built-in garages, which were at street level on one side of the doors, but about a foot higher at the other side, (....ramps?). So it was quite a relief to get back to the car and manoeuvre it back on to saner streets, and finally into the hotel's valet parking. We got under cover just in time as the rain swept in. The hotel restaurant has a reputation for good dining, so we began discussing the issue of where to have dinner over a refreshing cup of tea, went seamlessly on to happy-hour cocktails, and then as we watched the rain tipping down outside, we happily settled on an excellent dinner in the hotel.
Posted by Christina at 10:41 PM. Category: Holiday USA
