California

There is a photo album of photos from California.

We lived in San Francisco from 1988 to 1994, then in Hong Kong from 1994 to 2000. We returned to San Francisco in 1999 to investigate the possibility of moving back there after Hong Kong, but house and apartment prices have risen to such obscene heights (almost as high as in Hong Kong!) that it's now out of reach of us poor teachers, so we gave up that idea. This page describes our visit to San Francisco in 1999.

One day we explored the campus of Stanford University, including the Rodin sculpture garden. This tortured head below belongs to one of the Burgers of Calais who saved the city from the Brits by sacrificing themselves.

Above right is the San Francisco City Hall - we got married here in 1994 but that was before the damage of the 1989 earthquake had been repaired - it looks a lot nicer now.

Then back to SF and a tour of the Palace of the Legion of Honor, recently reopened after extensive seismic reinforcements. We went there to see an exhibition of Francis Bacon paintings... and arrived just in time to see them being put into crates. So we'll have to be patient before we can again enjoy Bacon's anguished works.

We spent many days at Lake Tahoe, on the border of California and Nevada and at an altitude of 2000 meters (second deepest alpine lake in the US). Under clear blue, skies, its a great place for hiking - this trail to Eagle Lake above Emerald Bay is one of our favorites.

Following this year's heavy snowfalls which continued even into June, the water level of the lake has risen nearly a meter and many of our favorite beaches have disappeared, but we could usually find a few square meters of sand to lie down on.

Leaving Lake Tahoe, we took a roundabout route back to San Francisco, crossing over to the coast at Gualala. There, we stayed in this place called St. Orres. Its architecture was inspired by the Russian seal hunters who settled the northern California coast.


St. Orres has a great hot tub but this one (below) at the nearby Old Milano Hotel is even nicer, with spectacular views of the ocean.

From Gualala, we drove a little further up the coast to Mendocino, where we noticed this strange sculpture on top of one of the buildings...