The day dawned cloudy but was expected to burn off away from the coast. Apparently the area is in a stable weather pattern for the next several days wherein we’re going to have beautiful weather inland and fog on the coast. So we decided to spend the morning indoors and head over the the Legion of Honor museum we missed seeing yesterday. That is until I checked the hours on the internet and found out they were closed Mondays. So, time to regroup.
Looking at the tourist map we had, I saw an icon for the Painted Ladies and thought it might be fun to get another iconic San Francisco photograph. So off we went to the Alamo Square area. However, once we got there and were parked, we realized we had no idea where those beauties were nor where the photographic vantage point was. So we took a couple of photographs of some Victorian houses across the street, including one which had some weird junk art assemblage in front. Notice how gray the sky still is.
We then wondered about driving around a bit to find the “real” Painted Ladies and decided, “Nah.” After all, I had seen plenty of painted up Victorians when I was living in the Boston area. They’re really pretty, but…
[BTW, that structure is “40-ft. tall junk assemblage in tiny front yard of SF artist/photographer Ron Henggeler”. I looked it up on roadsideamerica.com when we got home.]
Next we headed over to Vermont St. Per roadsideamerica.com, there is a faction claiming this is the “crookedest street in San Francisco”. I dunno. It certainly was steeper than Lombard St and the curves seemed to be tighter. But, per the Google map snippets below, there are more wiggles in Lombard St. I, personally, vote for Lombard St. But there was no traffic on Vermont St so that’s a plus in its favor.
It was still too cloudy to head for Coit Tower, the second original goal for today, so I pulled the Google map I had previously made and saw that Mission Dolores was close by. Off, off, and aw-a-a-y.
Brief tirade here. I like to use Google maps to plan a trip. I can create a map, plunk markers down for anything I might think interesting, and see their geographical proximity to each other. When I got my smartphone last year (Galaxy S3), I could then access that map from the Map app. It was much more convenient than the paper printout since I could zoom in & out. Then this past summer (ominous tones), Google “updated” the app and you no longer had access to those saved maps. I don’t know what they were thinking, but I don’t like the result. Searching on the internet gave the answer that I could uninstall the latest update and get the functionality back. This and a couple other changes Google has made to their offerings the last year+ have really annoyed me. I think they’re trying to link everything to Google+ for data mining reasons and I really don’t like it. OK, tirade off.
The first Mass at Mission San Francisco de Asis (popularly known as Mission Dolores) took place June 29, 1776 and the formal establishment of the mission occurred Oct 9, 1776. The adobe building was built completed in 1791 and is the oldest intact Mission. The basilica to the right was completed in 1918 after the previous one was destroyed in the earthquake of 1906.
The interior of the Mission has been lovingly restored and Masses are still celebrated here. The decorative alter (reredos) at the front of the Mission is from San Blas, Mexico, and was installed in 1796 and the two side alters, also from Mexico, in 1810. Amazing that everything made it through the earthquakes and subsequent fires. And the zeal for people to want to modernize things.
The parish cemetery is a peaceful place. This is a remnant of the original larger one and the headstones are mostly post gold-rush and predominantly feature Irish surnames. The early markers were wooden and vanished with time.
I don’t know why I enjoy Missions since I don’t have a Catholic background nor am I a religious person, but I’m drawn to them anyway. And I find the older cemeteries good for contemplation. Nothing profound ever comes of that contemplation, but does that matter?
Note from the shadows that the sun came out sometime while we were in the Mission. That means it’s time for Coit Tower.
“The tower was built in 1933 using Lillie Hitchcock Coit's
bequest to beautify the city of San Francisco [Wikipedia]”
The view towards the Golden Gate Bridge. As you can see, sunshine everywhere
except for that pesky marine layer. You can just see the base of the bridge.
The other claim to fame for Coit Tower is its murals. Most of the interior is covered with these murals which were painted in 1933 under the auspices of the Publics Works of Art Project, a New Deal project. I can’t speak to their intrinsic quality, but they reminded me a lot of several Post Office murals I’ve seen.
By this time we were both hungry and found a local sandwich shop, Freddie’s Sandwiches, and had some lunch. Good sandwiches with great bread but even the 6” sandwich was too much. But did I stop eating? No, of course not. I even had a piece of baklava and a nice strong cup of coffee afterwards.
The rest stop was nice, but it’s now on to more sightseeing. Next up: Grace Cathedral (Episcopalian). When the previous Grace Church was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake, this chunk of land in Nob Hill was given to the church by the Crocker family. Their house had been here but burned in the fires. Work began on the Cathedral in 1928 and was completed in 1964. Of course, there is always re-working. The interior is 60’s modern with a strong homage to the Gothic. Quite pretty in it’s own way. Fantastic stained glass windows and I love the glass? streamers in all their colors.
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There were many murals along the long side walls. This one depicts the burning of the old Grace Church in 1906.
By this time I was mentally exhausted – well overdosed on seeing new things with minimal time to digest those sights. I whined sufficiently and we went back to the hotel. Bad news was that our roomed hadn’t been cleaned and the cleaning lady was in the room next door. Good news was that the day was sunny and pleasant and there was a table outside I could sit at. So I started to read there while Ken took the car to get gas and air up one tire.
Meanwhile, the cleaning lady skipped over our room, going to the one on the other side of ours, and a panhandler sat at my table and started pestering me. So I went back to the room and waited for the maid to knock on the door. At which point I went back outside and sat & read at the now empty table.
After a nice couple of hours rest, I perked up enough to get back into the car and go over to the vista point on the Sausalito side of the Golden Gate. Alas, the marine layer had never really gone away for the day and was now pouring back in for the night. So no clear views of the Golden Gate. But I think we got some interesting photos anyway.
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After that it was back to the hotel and back to the Buena Vista. Ken ordered some supper and I longingly looked at the crab cakes our tablemates had, but I was still too full from lunch so just ordered a cup of clam chowder. And another Irish Coffee. This time I remember more of the conversation. The woman was originally from Argentina and the man is/was a local. He does art restoration and we discussed the Coit Tower murals, Diego Rivera, and post office murals to which I compared the Coit murals. That brought a laugh since he had just finished restoring the post office murals in Bodie State Historical Park. Bodie is a ghost town that’s maintained in a state of arrested decay. It’s one of the places I had put on my wish list for this trip.
Then climb back uphill to the hotel, a bit of television, and an early collapse into bed. I was tired then and no wonder! It’s taken me two days to write about it now.
[written 11/7-8/13]
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