Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Hiking @ SF

The day after our SF trip, we went back to go hiking.

We started the day in the Ferry Building in Embarcadero. We walked around the area and had lunch there. Too bad the flee market wasn't going on at the time. But it was a clear day and I was able to take better pictures than the ones I took during my Angel Island trip.

After lunch, we met up with the group in the Cliff House area. The hike started there and we went all the way to Land's End. Its mostly a coastal hike that has a great view of the ocean and the west side of the Golden Gate Bridge. We also saw the Sutro Baths ruins.

It was around sunset when we finished hiking. We then walked down the beach along the Great Highway. My friends threw freesbee, while I took pictures of the sunset.

Afterwards, we met up with a friend in BJ's Brew House in San Mateo for dinner.

Embarcadero Pictures:

Treasure Island, Yerba Buena and the Bay Bridge












Hiking Pictures:





Labyrinth we saw along the hike


Cliff House Area and Sutro Baths:













Sunset Pictures:
In some of these I played around with the camera's exposure settings to get a misty looking shot of the ocean.




















SF Trip

I went to SF a couple of weeks ago with my friend.

In Market and Powell we found the tap-dancing guy, those guys painted in silver doing robot moves, and some Native American people performing what seemed like rain dances. It was really warm that weekend and it was really nice in the city.

We went to FLAX art & design store in Market Street. It's a really cool art store with everything an artist would need. The walk from Powell and Market to FLAX exposes you to a diverse scene which includes a nice theater, strip clubs, homeless people, the UN Building, more strip clubs and more homeless people. Not really a place to be walking around with a brand new thousand dollar digital camera.

I taking my new Canon Rebel XT for a spin, and I figured the best place to try it out is from the 6th floor of SF Shopping Centre in Powell and Market. The camera did well in low lighting as I was able to get decent shot in ISO 1600.

Of course a trip to that area is not complete without going the usual places. We went to Blondie's for some yummy Pizza, we went to the Apple store to check out the latest iPod, and went to Virgin Records to check out the lates CDs and movies. We then went to Borders in Union Square to rest out legs and read some magz and check out the latest books. On our way home we ran into a friend who was out for shopping, what a coincidence!

That weekend was when H&M opened its doors in SF. I'm not really familiar with that store but when we passed it at 8:30PM on our way home, they still had lines around the block of people trying to get in. Supposedly, it's big in Manhattan and they have nice clothes at Old Navy prices.









Sacramento Trip

These are old pics taken earlier this month in Sacramento downtown area. They were taken a week after the nurses and teachers kicked Arnold's ass in the special election he pushed for. Unfortunately, the Governator was in the mother of all Red States (China) when I went to Sac.

Capitol Building Pics:






View of Capitol Mall from the Capitol



Cathedral


Around the block from the Capitol was a theater where new immigrants were sworn in. Outside the theater were Democrat and GOP sign-up tables.


Dems


Grand Old Party