Charlie Brown

Did you know this amazing sculpture, Charlie Brown, by Richard Serra is located in the Gap Building in San Francisco? This is on the top of my must see list next time I am in the city.

In Search of Diego

We spent Christmas night and the day after Christmas in San Francisco this year. We stayed at a cute little boutique hotel called Hotel Diva, below is a picture of Lindsay sitting in front of our room's window shade - awesome! Christmas night we wandered the city looking at lights and taking our time with an almost 3 hour dinner at a lovely restaurant. The next morning we woke up to a perfect San Francisco winter morning. The sun was shining and the streets were calling to us. So we set out on a walking adventure, one of our favorite things to do in SF. We were on a quest to find an original Diego Rivera mural in a public space. After reading an amazing children's book on Diego and Frida we learned that these murals did exist in San Francisco and we were on a mission to find one. After some research I decided the best one for us to hunt down was The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City located at the Art Institute of San Francisco. So we set out on our little adventure and ended up having an amazing day. The girls were little troopers walking up and down city streets until we found the art institute. Once there we were able to take in the mural plus explore the actual school itself. We found ourselves up on the roof at one point taking in breathtaking views of our favorite city by the bay - perfect. The rest of the day was spent with a little more exploring, pit stops at parks, and lastly with a matinee showing of Shrek the Musical at the Orpheum theater (If you have a chance to see this traveling show I highly recommend it!!!). What a fun little post Christmas celebration!!!!

Presidio Habitats

I came across this article on SF Gate about a new art installation in the Presidio called "Presidio Habitats". Here is an excerpt about it from the article:

The grassland and urban forest between the start and finish is scattered with 10 installations in what amounts to the first-ever site-specific art exhibition in a national park. The show, which took two years to plan and nearly $1 million to construct, is free, a gift from the For-Site Foundation, a San Francisco nonprofit dedicated to the making and understanding of art about place.

Most of the artwork is along trails and among the tall grass and dense cypress, down in the hollows and up in the trees. Each piece represents the artist's response to the preferences of an "animal client" that either lives in the Presidio or did.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/05/29/DD5H1DDH16.DTL#ixzz0pKPXFLjC

This looks amazing!!! If you want to see it you should make sure to stop by sometime soon, as stated in the article it will be removed after only one year.

The Mission

When headed to SF last weekend my youngest daughter had two requests:

1. Murals

2. Fashion Shops (This is Coco lingo for buy me some fancy, frilly, clothes!!!)

Our first stop The Mission neighborhood. My husband loves to go here for the food, my girls for the murals - so it is always a place we stop by when we head to the city.

Bay to Breakers 2010

For those of you who have never been to San Francisco's famous foot race Bay to Breakers - I suggest you go. It is a fun crazy time and it is done in a way only San Francisco can pull off!

Dynamo Donut

For those of you who know my amazing husband you know that he has a huge sweet spot for donuts. Wherever we go he is always on the lookout for the best or most unique donut that he can find. For quite some time now he has been wanted to try Dynamo Donut out in San Francisco. He has been researching, reading up on, finding bus routes to and dreaming about this place for many a months now. This last trip into the city he insisted, I MEAN INSISTED that we travel to the mission neighborhood and try this joint out. Now you will get his opinion on the place and a few pictures to go along with it. Here for the first time ever on Sactrippers is a guest blog entry for you all to enjoy by non other than the fabulous Dr. Russell:

As Chelsea stated, I do enjoy baked goods.... so its hard for me to turn down a good donut. A few years ago I watched an episode of "Throwdown! with Bobby Flay" when he challenged theDoughnut Plant in New York City. It was a hard fought match but in the end the trademarked "tres leches" donut from the Doughnut Plant came out on top. Since then I've been obsessed with going there, but I haven't made my way back there yet. I decided to look for spots a little closer to us and ended up reading a few online reviews about Dynamo Donut in San Francisco.

During our recent trip to San Francisco I set a little time aside first thing in the morning to take the girls down to the Mission to get some hot donuts! Upon arrival we waited a bit as the line was steady at the walk up counter. You basically order your donuts and coffee from the counter to go or to eat on the street. The staff was listening to "Kashmir" by Led Zeppelin as we ordered about about 7 or 8 donuts for the 3 of us. The main donut I had my eye on was themaple glazed apple bacon which did not disappoint. We also sampled the chocolate spice,vanilla bean and the carmel de sel. The donuts were well worth the wait, as was the coffee. The girls hot chocolates also came complete with the steamed milk contoured on the top in the shape of a heart, just like on their webpage. I'm looking forward to our next visit to San Francisco so we can sample several of the other delicious looking donuts at Dynamo Donut!

King Tut

We took the kids to the King Tut exhibit at the De Young Museum and had a great time. I had been wanted to see this traveling show for awhile so I was glad we were finally able to fit it into one of our San Francisco weekend trips. I prepared the kids by reading them the book:

Tut's Mummy Lost ......and Found

It gave them some base knowledge and the opportunity to start asking about a million questions before we even arrived. I knew taking two little girls wouldn't give us the opportunity to stay and read or observe everything as thoroughly as we would have alone but we set our expectations low and told ourselves that we would roll with the kids and take their cues as to how long they could handle it. Luckily the museum had it set up in such a way that you entered as a group at a certain time and then went through a series of about 10 rooms together. It moved along quite quickly (but still with enough time to check it all out) the timing seemed to work very well. My youngest (4 years old) fell asleep about half way through which was fine because she was free and then we didn't have to worry about her complaining to leave. My oldest (6 years old) was very captivated by the whole thing and wanted to see every artifact and have us explain it all over and over again. The last room was by far the coolest. It had imagery showing the mummy, explaining the process by which it was excavated and then many actual artifacts that were found inside the coffin - facinating!!!

If you are in need of a little nourishment before or after the exhibit the museum does have a nice little cafe with indoor and outdoor seating. We found it to be a nice place to relax and eat for awhile before the girls were asked to be quiet and behave on the tour. The outside eating area had a nice grassy area where the kids can run around and get their energy out which is always a bonus! Just be sure to keep them off of the outdoor sculptures otherwise you will be told to get the children off of the art work over a loud speaker like we were - so typical for us!

Besides the actual exhibit - which was obviously the biggest highlight for us - there were a few other favorite moments for my family.

1. The Observation Tower

For the girls it was the observation tower located at the top of the museum. We were lucky enough to be there on a picture perfect day so the view from the tower was spectacular. We all really enjoyed being up there.

2. The Amish Quilt Exhibit

I was pleasantly surprised when we arrived to see that the museum was having an amish quilt exhibit. My family was kind enough to humor me and check out the quilts - they might not admit it but I think they kind of liked it too :)

3. Three Day Museum Pass

We were also surprised to find out that when purchasing our King Tut tickets it also gave us general admission tickets to the rest of the museum for 3 DAYS!!! This was awesome, it really made us feel more relaxed especially with the attention span of our little ones - they always seem to do much better when they can take things in on small doses.

San Francisco Christmas Magic

We believe - we believe in the holiday magic found in big cities. Each year we take a weekend trip to San Francisco to see all of the lights, windows and holiday cheer and of course Santa. It is a trip we all look forward to and one that makes the most amazing memories. This year we chose to stay at the Westin St. Francis right across from Union Square. We made sure that our room had a view of the Christmas tree and ice skating rink - what fun! The girls love walking around the city looking at all of the amazing lights and window decorations. Of course a highlight is always the Macy's windows with the real live kittens that are up for adoption. This year we had an extra bonus - after visiting with Santa we stepped outside the store to find it was snowing!!!! Macy's had set up a snow making machine and had it running I think just for us :) We were all surprised and delighted and we didn't leave until we had each caught at least one flake on our tongues.

Fabulous Christmas Windows

The view from our room

Macy's Christmas wreaths

Looking back on our hotel

Kitten up for adoption in Macy's window