San Francisco (part 3)

Friday November 4, 2011

               This day started out very nice with a trip to the Japanese Tea Gardens next to the De Young Museum.  I absolutely loved this place.  It was very serene and peaceful.  I admire the way the Japanese have been able to capture the essence of peace and be able to create a place where you can feel it so abundantly.  I’m taking a Far Eastern Art class and it seems like almost everything in Asian art has symbolism so I wish I could’ve understood that better.  I love all the architecture that we saw here as well.  It’s so fascinating to me to see such ornate carvings, but it doesn’t look too ostentatious.

             Across the street from the tea garden was the De Young Museum.  From the tower at the top of this museum, you can see the whole city!  That was exciting.  The first exhibit we saw in here had a lot of South American art.  It was interesting to see the difference between that and the European art in the Crocker.   After looking at these, my mom and I decided to pay the extra money to see the featured exhibit “Masters of Venice”.  It was such a great experience and I loved seeing all that Italian art!  I think it was worth the money.  I don’t know if I’ll ever make it to Europe, but I feel like that was the best I can do right now. 

               Another part of this museum was a room where they had trompe l’oeil paintings.  There was a painting of a dead goose.  I thought it was a real goose.  I guess they accomplished what they wanted!

           My mother found her hero in this museum.  We were walking down the hall and she ran over to a painting and I thought she was going to rip it off the wall.  She loves Georgia O’Keeffe and found one of her paintings.  I had to take her picture with it.  When we were walking away, she said “I can die now.  My life is complete.”  I don’t judge her at all because I know the effect that art can have on someone.  It’s a powerful thing that I think a lot of people underestimate. 

On Friday we had some free time.  We went on a boat ride out to see the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz, it was worth the $15!  Here are some pictures from our adventures.  We did a lot of walking down Fisherman’s Warf and had a lot of fun watching people.

We later saw this guy dressed up in silver.  I can't imagine how long it must've taken to do that!

Made entirely from sourdough bread!

This kind of creeped me out....