Having been out walking in the Lake District just over a week ago and then snowboarding in Tahoe this weekend my body has taken quite a beating compared to its norm of sitting behind a desk. Today it got a little more of a work out too. Walking around San Francisco turned into a bit of an epic.

Getting off the train walking down to the waterfront seemed like a good idea. That is where I wanted to go but when I got there I couldn’t think what I really wanted to do. My real goal was to find the “Palace of Fine Art”, a wonderful dome and pillars which would look more at home in Egypt that San Francisco. It’s a considerable walk even from Fishermans Warf, never mind the train station.

However when I got there I decided that my next stop, Haight Street (a kind of hippy, goth, skateboarding mix of shops, bars and holes) couldn’t be that far away. I should have known that this is San Francisco and while it may not be far away it’s not going to be a flat walk. Turned out that Haight street is just about as high as you can get in that area of San Francisco. Walking through may areas, not sure if they’re safe or not but with little trouble. You can’t help but love the style and architecture here. From the grand buildings to the quaint townhouses that line ever street west of Van Ness. All that walking had made me hungry but it had also made me loose track of time, it was gone 3pm, with most little diners closed, a big slice of pizza had to do the job, oh and what great pizza it was.
Haight Street took me nicely to Golden Gate park. If you don’t know of this then you should. Enough of a city park to rival New Yorks Central Park. This is a park on a grand scale, with main commuter roads cutting through the green trees. It houses a number smaller parks and gardens, included a Japanese Tea Garden and a number of museums. I decided to sit and read for a while in the comfort of the Botanical Gardens.

Little did I know that all but one of the exits from this maze of little worlds were locked at 5pm. Huddled around one of the gates like monkeys in a cage I found some fellow Brits and other visitors. Between use we discounted each entrance we’d tried but was locked leaving only one that we were weren’t sure where it was. I finally managed to escape through a turnstyle only to be dumped at what I thought was the wrong end of the park. To my surprise, I’d been going the wrong way in the first place and this took me to exactly where I wanted to go, The Canvas Gallery. This little heaven of art, coffee, beer and social hangout holds a special place in my heart. It was here that I came for, my now girlfriend, Nikki’s art opening a few days after meeting here. I’m sat here writing this thankful that I made the effort to drive up to SF when my friends had decided it was too far to come. Now I’ve traveled half way around the world to spend a week with this amazing woman, a drive to SF hardly seems like anything.