Happy Anniversary

It’s official! We have completed our first year in San Francisco. I can honestly say that it doesn’t seem like it’s been an entire year. It seems like just yesterday David, Scott and I were trekking across Texas in the Explorer. We are thoroughly enjoying our time here, and I think we’ve adapted well to our new environment…Walking to the market with our canvas bags, regular picnics at the beach, avocadoes on everything. But…after a year, have we become too “California”?

1. More and more organic foods are creeping into the fridge…..
2. We’re all about public transit, though we’re really eyeing that Prius across the street
3. Anything above 70 degrees is almost unbearably warm

Or are we still Texan at heart?

1. We miss Tex-Mex and BBQ like crazy
2. Going to the mall is a pretty nostalgic experience
(or the apartment gets claustrophobic at times)

AND

3. State income tax??!!!?


Ok, I guess we’re a little of both now.

Since we’ve been in our current apartment for a year, we’ve tossed around the idea of leaving Cow Hollow and moving to a new neighborhood, either Cole Valley or Noe Valley (we like valleys). Cole Valley is great because its proximity to Golden Gate Park and Kezar Stadium, but it can get foggy at times. Noe Valley is near the Mission, and enjoys the best -weather in the city, but it’s further away from things. After attending a few open houses, and not seeing anything we really liked, we’ve decided to put off the hassle of moving till later in the summer. Looks like the Marina will do for a while longer.

The weather has been gorgeous lately, which makes exploring new neighborhoods pleasant. The weekend before we set out to Houston we checked out the Macy’s Flower Show, which was pretty impressive. I have a few pictures of the displays, my fave is the giant Ganesh at the front of the store.

CLICK HERE for more pictures

Take a hike

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Originally uploaded by ednalu.

You guys know I’m okay with nature, not ONE with nature, so when David suggested we go hiking this weekend, I was skeptical (do we remember the last outing to Muir Woods?) After all, my idea of a good hike is crossing Market Street to get from Macy’s to Bloomingdale’s.

After dinner Saturday we stopped at our local bookstore and picked up a book on different hikes in the bay area. We decided to try the Ring Mountain loop in Tiburon, not far from Sausalito. It was a perfect day to be outside! The entire hike took a little over an hour, and it wasn’t too steep or hard, and we had a really good time. The views from the top were gorgeous, especially the views of San Francisco. We saw lots of cool rock formations, including some petroglyph rocks. We were also on the lookout for en extremely rare flower called the Tiburon Mariposa Lily, found nowhere else in the world. Unfortunately we were a little early for wildflower season, so we’ll have to go back to look for the lily some other time. Looking for this wildflower made me think of the blubonnets in Texas….I wonder if they’ve started to bloom yet….

To see all out pictures from our hike, click here
*NOTE: For some reason flickr uploaded all of the pictures from most recently taken to last; so the pictures show up with the last ones first! I'll try to fix it, because it is driving me nuts!

Botero in Berkeley

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Originally uploaded by ednalu.

Last weekend we headed out to Berkeley to see the new Botero exhibit. Instead of driving (which would have taken 30 minutes) we took BART out there; it was a longer trek. From the apartment to Union Square was 30 minutes, but then the trip across the bay was something like 20 minutes.
The exhibit was very good; it's always interesting to see the different types of people who come out for art shows. This crowd was a little different though, since Botero is Colombian, there were a whole bunch of Colombianos around.

On a mission through the Mission

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Originally uploaded by ednita212.

I ran out of my Goya spices sometime last week. So this weekend we made a trip to the Mission to get all our latin necessities. We walked down Mission street, and found a great little market where I found not just Goya, but stuff to make all sorts of Colombian goodies.... Bunuelos, almojabanas, and they even had sello rojo coffee. You'd better believe we stocked up, it might be another 3 months till we can make it out there again.
Here's a picture of Mission Dolores Park.
To see all my pictures, click here

Top Ten #1: You know who you are……

And the thing I miss the most about Houston…….. family and friends of course!
It was so great to catch up and spend time with everyone. It had been a really long time since we had seen some of you, but I am so glad we had a good long while to do stuff. Even though I love Christmas and the presents, my favorite time was spent bowling! What a blast, I'm sure bowling night will be destined to become a new family tradition!