- October 2006
From October 1-10, we spent some time in the San Francisco area attending some meetings. Alan played hooky one day (Thursday Oct 5), so we walked from our hotel in the Nob Hill
area down to Fisherman's Wharf, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and Fort Mason (basically, on the northern edge of SF proper, with views of the Golden Gate Bridge). It
happened to be "Fleet Week" where the Blue Angels and other aerobatic and stunt planes were planning to perform (and race) on Friday. So this was their practice day. We had
breakfast watching the Blue Angels and thought "cool - we must get out there quick!" and so we did and we proceeded to watch the Blue Angels practice for about 90 minutes,
mostly one or two at a time, but eventually with 4 and even 6 planes. They flew overhead and converged and did their formation flying over the bay. When they went away, we
watched the stunt planes fly their paces through a bunch of pylons. When we got bored of that, the Blue Angels returned and were still flying when we took the cable car back up to
Nob Hill in the late afternoon. The photo of the Transamerica building is taken from our hotel room. On Saturday, we took the bus to Golden Gate Park and wandered
around the Japanese Tea Garden area and the rose gardens and arboretum. A wonderful park - you could spend days there and not see it all.
On Sunday, we rented a car and drove over the Golden Gate to Sonoma and the wineries. We stayed in a nice hotel owned by the Ferrari-Carano winery (see the formal garden photo
for the winery itself). It's a gorgeous area and "they have wine here" became a mantra for us. Yum. Bought a few bottles which we brought home in our checked bags. Made some good
discoveries, one of which is that we want to retire there!
