North West USA

part 1

Sunday14 May 2023

WWe spent the night in the Sheraton at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, because we leave early today for America and we want to check in at 6:50 am. It is remarkably quiet at Schiphol and we don't have to stand in line anywhere. It is quiet at the luggage drop-off and the security check and also at the restaurants for breakfast.

The KLM flight departs half an hour later than planned because there is an older couple on board, of which the wife is not feeling well. The captain does not want to take them on the flight, because of the risk that her situation could worsen. The pair disagree, but eventually disembark anyway. Nevertheless, we arrive on time in San Francisco.

Around noon we arrive in San Francisco, happy to know that our home team of Feyenoord Rotterdam have become football champions of the Netherlands during our flight. There  is a long queue for immigration. We have to wait in line for almost 40 minutes.

We take the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train to the center of the city and then a bus for 4 stops. Then we are at the Parker Guesthouse, not far from the Castro district. We check into the room and rest. Then I go downtown to the Apple Store on Union Square to buy a new iPad mini. I also get a prepaid SIM at AT&T for my iPhone. I am helped well and quickly. I take an E-SIM with prepaid plan of 15GB of data, unlimited calls and text messages and I get a US phone number. I can still be reached on my Dutch number via the Dutch e-SIM.

In the evening we eat nearby at Le Mediterranee. We watch some TV and go to bed before eight o'clock.

Monday 15 May 2023

We sleep long and well and get up around 7 am. The breakfast is good, but there are no cheese or cold cuts.

We take the tram (called Metro) to Embarcadero. There is the Ferry Building, where many ferries across the San Francisco Bay once departed. Now there are just a few left. These days there are bridges across the bay and there is BART. The building is now a market hall with deli food. You can also drink and eat there. From there we walk to the first stop of the California Street Cable Car. We ride the entire route. Still a nice experience. On the way back we get off in front of the Street Car museum, but that turns out to be closed on Mondays. The museum is in the same building where the machines are located that keep the Cable Cars moving. We have a Japanese lunch (ramen) and go back to the hotel.

In the afternoon I go to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). The building and the collection are large. Many artists are unknown to me, but there are quite a lot of works by Andy Warhol and Roy Liechtenstein. Also a floor with photography and installations. The bottom two floors are free to enter (you pay $25 for the rest). Down there you will find the classic moderns, such as Matisse, Picasso, Braque, but also Mondrian, Dalí, Van Doesburg, etc.

On the ground floor, a large work by Diego Rivera (1886-1957), the husband of Frida Kahlo, takes up half the floor. A symbolist work on the ideal of Pan-American unity. Rivera made a number of large murals in San Francisco, but unfortunately they are no longer publicly accessible.
Back at the Guesthouse we take part in the wine hour and then go for a pizza down the street.

Weather: cloudy at first, then sunny. 19 degrees

Tuesday 16 Mei 2023

After breakfast we take bus 33 to Haight Street, in the Haight – Ashbury district, which was the epicenter of Flower Power in the 1960s. The district still has an esoteric atmosphere and the residents are mostly hippies from that time. We get off at the end of Haight Street, where Unlimited Bike has a branch. We rented bikes there for the day. Erik has an e-bike and I have a hybrid bike. We cycle into the adjacent Golden Gate Park, the green lung of the city. We start at the AIDS memorial grove. A grove where a granite floor with names reminds of the victims of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. We cycle along the JFK Promenade to the museums: the De Young on one side and the California Institute of Science on the other. Then we cycle through beautiful parkland. We turn, uphill to Stowe Lake. Boats and pedal boats can be rented here, but it is not very busy. We drink juice. Then we cycle on to the Bison Paddock. A kind of deer park for bison. The animals are a bit camera shy, because they are in an area where they are difficult to photograph. We cycle further towards the coast and arrive at the Queen Wilhelmina Windmill. A copy of a Dutch windmill from 1903. The garden around the mill will be replanted with, among other things, marigolds. We continue to the beach. Here it is busy with school classes, which get some marine life education. We cycle along the beach to the other windmill, the Murphy Windmill. The mill was built in 1908 to pump water to the Golden Gate park, just like the Dutch Windmill we saw earlier. It was replaced by electric pumps in 1913. The mill fell into disrepair, but was restored in 2002 (the Dutch Windmill in 1981).

We cycle via Martin Luther King Drive back to the De Young, where we have lunch. After lunch we cycle to the bike rental and take the bus back to the guesthouse.

In the afternoon we walk to the basilica San Francisco de Asisi. This church was built in 1913 on the site of the original Spanish mission from 1776. San Francisco was one of 20 Spanish mission churches on the west coast at the time. The mission remained a village until the Gold Rush of 1849 when the town exploded. The church was destroyed by the great earthquake in 1908 and rebuilt. The original mission chapel was spared. In 1952 the church was elevated to a basilica.

Around 5 pm we take the bus to Castro Street. Here we have a drink at Twin Peaks Tavern, the first gay bar to have large transparent windows facing the street so that everyone could see who was inside. The audience is aging. Then we walk down Castro Street. Still the epicenter of gay culture, but you can see that especially the older guard feels at home here. We have a drink at Midnight Sun, a video bar that was also there in 1993 when I first visited. The audience is still the same age as mine.

After the cocktails we walk to Frances, a good restaurant on 17th Street. It's a small restaurant, but very loud. This is partly due to a lack of upholstery and sound proofing. The food is delicious. We take the Chef Tasting menu. A four-course menu, but the first three courses consist of two parts. We add a wine pairing. The pace is high and after 75 minutes we are done.

Weather: sunny and 21 degrees. In the evening it cools down to 15

Wednesday 17 May 2023

After breakfast we order a ride with Uber. We are picked up in a spacious Toyota Sienna. The driver says little, but Golden Gate is very correct and takes us to the Hertz rental location on Beach Street, near Fisherman's Wharf. Because I am a Gold member, the procedure is super fast. We get a Nissan Ultima. We drive to the visitor center of the Golden Gate bridge. It belongs to the Golden Gate National Park. In the visitor center we buy the “America the Beautiful Pass”, which gives access to all National Parks, Monuments, etc. for $80 for a year. An advantage, because our first park Yosemite already costs $37 for a day.

We drink coffee in the cafeteria with a view of the bridge, which is unfortunately shrouded in fog. We have to register our car for the bridge tolls via a website. Then we drive over the bridge out of town. We then take the Richmond bridge across the bay towards Oakland and then continue southeast. After 4 hours we are in Mariposa, a village near Yosemite National Park. We are staying at the Quality Inn. A little dated, but clean and functional. We rest and do some shopping.

In the evening we eat Mexican at Castillo restaurant near the hotel.

Weather: in SF 17˚; in Mariposa 32˚

Thursday 18 May 2023

We get up at 6 o'clock. We want to beat the crowds in Yosemite and avoid the traffic jams. The breakfast at the hotel is not much brag about. We set off at 6:30 am and arrive at the park around 8:00 am. The way there is already beautiful, through the valley of the Merced river.

In Yosemite we first look at the Tunnel View. No tunnel vision, but a viewpoint at the entrance of a tunnel through a mountain. The view over the valley is beautiful, with the El Capitan mountain in the middle. We drive down and arrive at the Upper Yosemite waterfall. Also very beautiful. Up close you get wet from the spray water and the swirling river. We then go to the Yosemite village for coffee. From there we drive to the Sentinel bridge, but the parking lot is closed there. Then to Valley View. Nice viewpoint over the valley. Bridal Veil falls is inaccessible due to roadworks and Glacier Point will not be accessible by car until July due to heavy snowfall last winter. We then go back to the exit and stop a few more times for beautiful views and waterfalls. It has become much busier in the meantime and there is a long traffic line in front of the entrance.

Back in Mariposa we have lunch at 1850 restaurant and in the afternoon I dip into the swimming pool of the hotel. In the evening we eat pasta at a pizzeria. But that's more of a greasy spoon. It's fills, it must be said.

Weather: in Mariposa 33˚, in Yosemite 17˚ and sunny

Friday 19 May 2023

From Mariposa, where we stayed, it is about a 2 hour drive to Sacramento. Sacramento became the capital of California in 1850. At the time it was the only significant city, but it was soon overtaken by San Francisco and Los Angeles. It is a not too big a city, dominated by the government building, the State Capitol. We visit it with a guide. We are shown the meeting rooms of the California Assembly and Senate. Interesting. In the portrait gallery of former governors, Ronald Reagan (1967-75) – who would become president in 1980 – and Arnold Schwarzenegger (2003-11) – nicknamed the Governator – stand out. The portrait of Jerry Brown (1975-83) was not allowed to hang with the others. It was too modern for the California delegates' taste.

In the basement - now called the Lower Level - is a statue of Ronald Reagan, who, as said, would become President of the US. After the tour, we go back to the hotel and have a rest. In the evening we eat Indian. Good food, but the service falls a bit short. Our credit cards are declined. We pay cash.

Weather: warm and sunny, 30˚

Saturday 20 May 2023

We drive to Old Sacramento, the oldest part of the city on the Sacramento River near the Tower Bridge. It is a few blocks with 19th century wooden buildings. It is an night life area, which especially comes alive at night. Here is also the California Railroad Museum. There is rolling stock that can run on a museum track. There are ships on the riverbank, which function as a hotel or as a river cruise boat. A special attraction is a group of sea lions, which hang out on a jetty for pleasure boats. The sea lions have swum up the river in search of food. The local TV news wonders if the animals will stay, because the municipality has built the jetty for $ 3.5 million, but not for the sea lions.

We then drive to the California museum. The museum is dedicated to the history and people of the state. There is a room dedicated to gender equality and female role models from the state, such as Nancy Pelosi (Speaker of the House of Representatives in Washington DC), Megan Rapenoe (captain of the US women's soccer team), and Janet Yellen (Central Bank President and now Minister of Finance). There is also an area dedicated to diversity. On the ground floor it is mainly about population groups that have not always gotten a good deal, such as the Native Americans, the Chinese and the Japanese. The Chinese immigrants played an important role in the construction of the Trans-American Railroads from the East Coast to California, for which they only recently received recognition. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Japanese were interned in concentration camps. Their loyalty to America was questioned. Later in the war, a segregated company was established in the army with American-Japanese soldiers. They felt a burden to prove that they were American first and Japanese second. After the war, the American Japanese still suffered a lot of racism.

After the museum we go to the hotel and have a sandwich at Subway. In the afternoon we go to the Sutter Fort Historical Park. This is the original fort that Swiss immigrant Sutter founded as an outpost for the conquest of California from the Indians and Spaniards. Sacramento arose from the fort, which became the capital of the new state in the Union in 1850.
In the evening we eat at Waterboy, a great restaurant in Midtown, in the gay quarter of the city. We have an excellent meal and after dinner we visit two gay bars: Mercantile Saloon and The Depot.

Weather: sunny, 27˚C  

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