explore the Bay Area

I skated a good portion of this recently—it’s a great scenic route that covers a lot of distance right through Martinez, Concord, Pleasant Hill and Walnut Creek but it’s quietly removed from most of the traffic that normally dominates the urban areas. It connects to the Iron Horse trail which is a major North/South route in the east bay too. Someone else did a great writeup of it already:
http://home.pacbell.net/leewaysf/cccanal.html

This was a fun little tour. On Friday the 13th they have special “Flashlight Tours” where they take groups through with the lights off at night and everyone gets a flashlight. I’d never been before and just did this. The whole tour lasted more than an hour, which with the bigs groups they had got a little boring at times. The house was really cool though with all sorts of wierd things like doors that open to a wall, and stairs to the ceiling.

http://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/

I’m looking for a new house to rent, but looking at houses for sale are great too. Visiting open houses can be a different way of exploring an area. Driving around to all these different neighborhoods and actually seeing some of the houses, is kinda cool in an offbeat sort of way. It gets you off the main streets into some of the side areas, and you certainly learn where everything is faster. There’s always listings in the sunday paper of what’s open for the weekend, just pick a place you havn’t been yet mapquest a bunch of directions and have at it!

just went there on Saturday. Get there early if you don’t like crowds ‘cause by noon there was hordes of people. The current Hatshepsut exibhit is definitly worth the price of admission (extra $5 on top of $10 for an adult admission) So the museum itself is pretty starkly contrasting to it’s surroundings in Golden Gate Park, but it’s exterior is copper so the idea is that it will oxidise and turn green eventually. Even though there’s lots of empty space, there’s still a ton to see and in 1/2 day we didn’t get through all of it.

Close by is also the Botanical Gardens and a few other things. I think the Tea House is overrated, small and they charge for admission to see some small koi ponds and a gift store. If you go in the last half hour before closing (5:00 I think) they let you in for free.

Down the street is Ocean beach, and some pretty awesome oceanside cliffs.

Close by the park on 9th Ave & Ignacio are lots of restaurants, parking is terrible but if you don’t mind, you can walk most of the way through the park I think.