Oakland & San Fran

This year for our “I need a break from Chicago winters” trip in late January, we went to visit friends in Oakland & San Francisco. We coordinated this trip with a national children’s art contest that Ann was asked to juror.


Here we are on a hill overlooking San Fran.

We were there for a long weekend. So on one of the days, John spent the day with his friend, Wes.

While I spent the day with my friend, Rob.

Then we all got together that night for dinner. The restaurant was packed with a long wait time for a table. But Wes managed to talk the hostess into letting us have the “chef’s table” that they were holding for later that night. We just had to be out in less than 2 hours. Easy enough to do and we had the best table in the house.

We also went out to dinner with a number of people from Sakura who put on the art contest.

While waiting for Rob to pick me up for our day of sightseeing, I wandered around near the hotel. I happened upon a farmers market. The market was in the city’s “China Town”. This street musician was playing 2-string, bowed instrument that made hauntingly beautiful music. As I was standing there listening, he stopped and motioned for me to sit down and try it. I couldn’t make the beautiful clear notes that he did (okay so dogs were howling two towns away) but it was fun sitting there in the middle of a street market in a strange city being shown how to play by someone who I didn’t speak a common language with.

The Museum of Children’s Art where I was asked to juror the art contest was on the same street as the farmers market.
During a break between the judging and the reception, another juror and I walked around Chinatown.

We found 2 sets of Chinese dragons roaming the neighborhood. It appeared that they were “blessing” the doorways of the local businesses. At each doorway was a dance to loud drumbeats followed by the dropping of a large handful of very loud fireworks. We learned quickly to back away before the deafening fireworks were dropped!