Valencia part 3

Shopping in the old part of the city.  There is a local who paints himself in all of his graffiti.  Here is an example. 

We went to the Lladro store. 

This is a bottle of water.  I brought one home because I thought it was so pretty.  

A random store display. 

 

Valencia part 2

 Valencia at night...

We spent a lot of time in this plaza because it was close to our Air BnB. 

These towers used to be attached to a wall that surrounded the whole city.  They are on the end of a bridge that goes over to another part of town where we went to the Museu de Belle Arts de Valencia.  

One of the guardians of the bridge.

Inside the museum

Valencia part 1

 Views from Valencia. 

Valencia orange trees all over the city

This is one of the markets where the locals shop

Here's me on the roof of our Air BnB on our first day.  

Finger Lakes

To round out the summer, Jill, LT and I took a drive north for a couple of days to the Finger Lakes region of New York.  Here we are at one of the vineyards 

Seneca Lake

 

One of many waterfalls in the area.

Mission district

 After going to the Golden Gate park, we went to the Mission District for lunch at La Taqueria, which is a well-known Mexican restaurant.  They were still not doing sit down service, so we had to get our tacos to go, which was a little annoying as there was no place to go sit.  We walked a block or two until we found a smoothie place with a few outdoor seats.  We went in and order $9 lemonades, and sat at their tables to eat our food.  It was worth it.

Then we walked around to see the murals that the Mission district is known for.  Here are a few that we saw

At the end of the day, we went to the Ghirardelli Square and stood in a ridiculously long line (because their main restaurant was also not open yet) to get a sundae.

  

Golden Gate Park

 One day, we went for a bike ride through Golden Gate park.  Everyone that we talked to liked to point out that it is bigger than Central Park.  It is a nice park, but I don't feel like we need to compete with whose park is better.  

They saved some buffalo when they were in danger of being extinct.  

There are two windmills in the park.  They also have a tulip garden, but we missed tulip season.  

The California state flower, California poppy

This is from the AIDS memorial garden

Redwood trees

Alcatraz

 We tried to get tickets to Alcatraz but they were sold out before we had even decided to travel to SF.  Julia called them to find out why we couldn't get tickets, and they told her to keep trying, even the day of. So we kept trying, but I had pretty much given up after a few days.  But then our second to last day, I was working from my bedroom, and she called out, "Can you go at 3:00 today?  There are 8 tickets that just became available."  So we got to go.  I didn't get very many good photos, but here's what I got.  

Here's Alcatraz island from the shore

To get to the prison, we had to walk up this hill...

Or take this little trolley.

There were lots of gardens around and people working in them.  

There were some buildings around because people used to live on the island when it was a military prison.  This was a building where they held dances for the residents of the island.  

I learned that in 1969, a group of American Indians occupied the island and there was an exhibit about it for the 50th anniversary.  You can read more about it here. 

There was also this restored truck that had been part of one of the movies that was filmed there.