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Sunday, February 19, 2012

Some old news... Part I

I was looking through our photos from the past couple of months and suddenly came to reliase how we haven't shared our December bike trip around San Francisco and to the Marin headlands! We were in San Francisco for the weekend to see the National by the civic centre. It was a wonderful show - although we were shattered from all our adventures during the day. Our plan was to take the ferry over to Angel Island, cycle around the island and the hike to the top to enjoy the view of the city. The ferries are not very regular though and we missed our only chance to go across in the morning. So instead we cycled along the piers, past the Golden Gate Bridge,  through Presideo Park, through Golden Gate park and then up through the city centre and to the civic centre. The weather was glorious and it was already December!!



San Francisco

Iain at the Golden Gate

The Marin Headlands on the other side


Wearing a helmet, dad!!

The hilly city

Sun setting just outside the Golde Gate Park

The next day we packed some lunch, checked out of our Days Inn motel room and cycled back down to the piers and this time over the bridge. There we took a brief stop at the vista point before we cycled through a tunnel and down to the Marin Headlands to the left of the bridge. Weather was still sunny and beautiful and we cycled all the way to the beach where we had lunch before we took off past the missile base and all the way to the little light house. There we saw peregrine falcons and seals and lots of pelicans. Wildlife success! We took a tractor road back up it was terribly steep so we had to walk our bikes most of the way (also turns out hybrids don't like tractor roads!). We got to the vista point at the left of the bridge just as the sun was setting and it was the best of views (although getting a bit chilly!). Then we cycled back across the bridge and to the embarcadero where we caught the bus back to Emeryville from which we took the train to Davis.

Pelican!

Lunch looking over the beaches, Marin Headlands










San Francisco in the background 

Tiny light house on the edge of a cliff

Seals!






Look at the state of his jeans, Caroline!

Fastelavn!

I think it is years since I have celebrated fastelavn in the traditional way with creamy sweet buns and feathers fastened on pussy willows. This year I got the buns made, but felt no need to bring blossoming greens into the house as I only have to step out onto my patio to be surrounded by them! Spring comes early to California and my thoughts go to all of my friends and family back home who are currently snowed in... Much love!


Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Apologies...

... to my mother and to Caroline and anyone else who might be visiting my blog on a somewhat regular basis. I have been very lazy and now I have so much to tell you all that I don't know where I start!

What we have done so far:

- we celebrated my 30th (!!) birthday in Calistoga, Napa Valley (!!!)
- we celebrated Christmas in Atlanta with a chubby and very very friendly cat called Chuck
- we built a kitty castillo (!) our of numerous amazon cardboard boxes for Kartika and Jason's cats that we cat sat
- we ate a lot of cheese
- we made a lot of bread
- we threw a Burns' supper with genuine haggis (!!)
- we drank a lot of good wine (and some not so good wine)
- we cooked a lot of good food (and some not so good food)

... but most importantly: Iain bought me a kitchen machine for Christmas so nothing in the world can stop me now.

PS: this is Chuck - he is awesome.