Kristen and I were looking forward to this one, because it seemed like a great museum/aquarium/planetarium and it didn’t disappoint! We headed downstairs to the Aquarium and it was a decent sized place. There was some old tortoises and alligators in the first part but couldn’t take pictures of them. Something about light sensitivity or something. This aquarium was far better than the Aquarium on the Bay just because of variety of animals they had. Plus there were penguins! Can’t beat Penguins at zoos and aquariums. Steinhart Aquarium also had tunnels that you can walk under the animals. I always love that type of stuff because it’s somewhat scary seeing giant fishes, sharks, etc. swimming over your head.

After the aquarium, Kristen and I went to the Rainforest section. It was really hot inside and neat to see all these butterflies flying around you. I guess the butterflies and insects like to escape since they make you do a pat-down before you leave. I was just imagining a big beetle on my back and I didn’t even know it haha. From the rainforest, we watched the adorable penguins being fed and then watched an interesting movie at the planetarium. It was narrated by Jodie Foster and was about life elsewhere in the galaxy.

California Academy of Sciences was great and I recommend going to that. It’s just a pain having to ride the Muni bus to get there. I guess you could drive if you have a car. We went to the Japanese tea garden after that and it was nice. It’s the oldest Japanese garden in the United States. It’s 7 dollars for admission (non-residents), and you can also pay for tea and some food. We wanted some Mochi ice cream, which was yummy of course. I got hook on that ice cream ever since I moved to Jersey City. I always need that when I order Thai food. The gardens had koi ponds, flowers, arched drum bridge (sadly this was closed because of wet paint), stepping stone paths and some other stuff.

We wanted to go to Haight Ashbury area after the gardens, so we ended up walking along the outside of Golden Gate Park to go to Haight. Kristen wanted to check out Amoeba Music, because believe it or not, she’s never been to a vinyl store before. That sentence alone makes me feel very old haha. I went into the store and remember the days I used to drive down to Vintage Vinyl in New Jersey to get some rare ska/punk CDs, 7”, etc. Now I just think the record store premise is outdated and not really relevant anymore. Not to mention overpriced. It’s nice being able to look at the large album artwork on the vinyl but I can’t stand listening to it.

Kristen and I had lunch at Magnolia Pub and Brewery; that place makes an awesome cheeseburger! After lunch, we continued down Haight and made our way to the “Painted Ladies” in Alamo Square. Honestly, I don’t know why these particular houses are special compared to ones that are right off Haight. Those were more colorful and interesting to me. Once we made it to Alamo Square, we just hung out there for a little bit and relaxed. It’s important to sit back and relax on vacation every once and awhile.

After dinner, we took a bus over to Smuggler’s Cove, which is somewhat in the Civic Center district. It’s not the best neighborhood so definitely take public transportation. The bar is hardly noticeable on the outside, and only has black windows and small white text saying the name of the place. Like in Swingers, it’s always hardest to find the really good bars.

I don’t drink but if I did and lived in SF, I would be going to Smuggler’s Cove all the time. The inside feels like Pirates of the Caribbean ride, but with awesome music. The music ranged from Caribbean to old ska/reggae to some soul/motown. The place only allows 49 people in at a time, so you’re always guaranteed a small crowd. I wish there was more places like this in New York City or Jersey City.

If you want to see some of my Instagram photos from the trip, check them out here.

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I picked up a rental car at Hertz across the street from our hotel. They nickle and dime for everything, including picking up the car for you? Gimme a break, and then the people helping me into the car expect a tip. Yeah right. But anyway, the thing I was worried about the most on this trip was driving in San Francisco. I drive like a lunatic on a daily basis with my hour and half (sometimes more) commute to and from work, so I’d rather not drive on vacation if I don’t have to. Since we were driving around 7:45am, the drive out of San Francisco wasn’t bad at all. The one thing that was a concern was the rain and fog. I didn’t think it was going to be rainy this early in the morning, but thankfully the rain wasn’t as heavy when we got to Muir Woods.

We drove over the Golden Gate bridge and barely could see anything around us. I guess that was a good thing when we headed for Muir Woods. Usually you can see down and see how far up you are. All we could see was a white blanket fog so that helped with Kristen not freaking out. We arrived to Muir Woods around 8:15am and maybe saw 2 other cars there. The park was open but the place to buy tickets wasn’t. So we could just walk right in without having to pay, but I donated some money anyway. The big redwoods is a sight to see! I absolutely loved it at Muir Woods. The big trees blocked the rain from coming in too much, so we didn’t need an umbrella at all. The fog was coming through the trees and made it a pleasant sight to see. Another pleasant sight was not having to run into our tourist for a good half hour/hour.

Kristen and I were just in awe of the redwoods and the beauty of Muir Woods. I was joking and talking like a robot “keep taking photos…” because I just couldn’t help myself with picking up my camera to take a picture every 5 seconds. I really wish I brought my tripod for Muir Woods because it was DARK inside the forest. I was shooting at least ISO 1600-2000 with a shutter speed around 1/30-1/125. Thankfully I held that camera firm and my camera is decent in low lighting.

Some walkways were a little bit muddy so we didn’t do any of the hilly paths. Some were actually closed because of mudslides though. We just stuck to the main deck-like pathway. The entire time I just kept thinking of Ewok Village from Return of the Jedi. I thought a bunch of ewoks were going to come out attacking a speeder bike. Thankfully by the time all the tourists came, we were heading out. It would have been tough to get shots without people in them if we showed up later. I highly recommend renting a car and just going by yourself…EARLY! That way you have enough time to just relax and walk at your own leisure.

Since we didn’t really have breakfast, we scarfed down the Italian pastries we bought in Little Italy the previous night. Then it was off to Sonoma. It was still very foggy, but the rain was on & off, and when it was raining it was this very light misty rain. It felt like one of those mist tents you see at Warped Tour or something.

Driving in Sonoma was awesome; it reminded me of Ireland a little bit. Beautiful Green hills that stretched for miles and miles! I felt like stopping every 2 seconds to take pictures but lots of cars were around and there were also dumb signs saying you couldn’t stop. I was saying in the car, “oh here’s beautiful scenery, want to take a picture? Well FUCK YOU! You Can’t!” Before we hit the wineries, we stopped into town and grabbed some food at the Girl and the Fig. By far, this was one of the best meals I had in California. I order the pork belly sandwich with an egg on top, with Brioche bread. Holy crap, it was amazing! Not exactly healthy but whatever, I was on vacation.

After lunch, we went to the oldest winery in California, Buena Vista Winery. Nice place and nice staff. Kristen did a basic wine tasting for 10 bucks. After that we drove over to a newer winery called Valley of the Moon. Another nice place with more scenic vineyards around the place. We took some pictures and headed inside for more wine tasting..well Kristen did the tasting. Apparently the wine was good, and the staff was nice as well.

After the wine tasting, it was time to head back to San Francisco. I stopped off to fill up gas at the Muir Woods exit, and then made our way back to SF. I drove on some steep hills before but nothing like the ones in San Francisco. Traffic wasn’t bad but things got a bit hectic to say the least when I was trying to park the rental car near our hotel. Driving on Market is a bit of a pain because it’s like Manhattan, but you have to deal with more buses, trolleys, cable cars and other crap. It made the last 15 minutes of the journey stressful. I was flipping out because I kept having to go all the way around the block to try to find where the park the damn car. What made it worse was some roads were blocked off. Thankfully I parked the car and told Hertz they need to have better directions for coming back. If they told me to pull into the lobby area by Mission, I wouldn’t be typing this.

That evening, we ended up taking a bus to Mission area to try to find some Mexican food. We found a Vegan Organic Mexican placed Gracias Madre. We didn’t know if we wanted to walk around or just eat there, but we ended up just going there. The food is definitely interesting, and good..if you’re a vegan/vegetarian. I prefer meat but with all the meat and heavy foods I had for the week, it was nice to have something on the healthier side. I had Broccoli and “Greens” tacos. I liked the Broccoli tacos a lot but didn’t like the Greens one that much. I recommend the place if you’re a Veg Head.

Since I didn’t take any pictures for Day 7, there won’t be a blog for that. I’ll just sum it up here. Went to back to Market Bar at the Ferry Building for breakfast and it was delicious again. After that, we went to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). Some things were cool to see like Dali and surrealism artwork. The type of art I HATE to see is giant gray canvas paintings hanging in museums. I’m sorry, that garbage is so easy to do and probably took 5 minutes to do. I could shit onto a piece of paper and hang it up on the wall and would look ten times better than that stuff. I’m sure some pretentious art douche will explain the meaning behind the painting, but in the end, it’s just a boring gray painting.

Our flight was at 9pm so we just relaxed in the hotel room, grabbed a last meal in Little Italy and made our way to the airport via the BART. I can’t stand when you’re trying to use your train ticket with luggage and the damn doors close on you. Yeah, that happened to us. We got to the airport pretty early, and we found out the flight was delayed at least 2 hours. Not entirely that bad, I don’t mind if it’s only two hours or so. So we found an outlet and watched some TV shows online while waiting for the flight. I was happy to catch up on Game of Thrones and Castle. The flight home was pretty quick after that, I didn’t get much sleep though. Sometimes I’m great on redeyes, other times I can’t fall asleep.

San Francisco is a great place to visit if you like sights, amazing food, museums, nice parks and drinking. It felt like a food tour for us and we didn’t have a bad meal the entire week. I highly recommend driving out to Muir Woods, Sonoma or NAPA. Seeing the night tour at Alcatraz is a must I think too. My only complaints about San Francisco is everybody stinks of weed and it’s a pain in the ass for transportation at times. But other than that, it’s an awesome city!

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The Real Deal New York

The work was appraised after the accident at 0,000 and Arman is seeking that amount, plus interest, from Louise Blouin Media, Inc., which owns Art + Auction.  The complaint was filed April 24 in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

[This entry was drafted with the assistance of Nicole Dornbusch].

Art Law Blog

The DeYoung is a big museum but we did that without the special exhibition in an hour. I guess that’s why the CityPass offers the DeYoung Museum and Legion of Honor in the same day. Meaning you have to do them on the same day. If the museums were so connected, perhaps they should have offered a shuttle service to the Legion of Honor? It’s a big pain in the ass to get there! From the DeYoung Museum, we took 2 buses to get there and walked a little. If I didn’t have my phone with me and was using Google Maps, I seriously wouldn’t know what the fuck I was doing. You look up on Google Maps the directions, and they tell you what the buses and transportation is looking like for that time. The 2nd bus we were on brought us to the top of the park where the museum is located.

Before we went into the Legion of Honor, we admired the views of the Golden Gate bridge and took a bunch of pictures in front of it. It was probably the best view we had of the bridge on our trip besides the ferry rides, and it was the clearest day of the trip too. I desperately wanted to play some golf while I was there since it was so scenic. Kristen and I wanted to get our picture together in front of the bridge, so we asked this old lady to do it since she was the only one around. Well, there was only one problem, the damn bridge wasn’t even in the shot! hahaha. We got the shot later after the museum and asked someone differently.

Legion of Honor is another interesting museum that you can do pretty quickly. There is a lot of Rodin stuff, which I love. It felt like being in Paris all over again because there’s an original Thinker there, as well as The Kiss and some others. I like Legion of Honor better than DeYoung surprisingly.

Later that evening, we had reservations with Allegro Romano in Little Italy. We took a cable car and had to walk up a few steep hills to get there as well. The place is very nice with a very friendly & helpful staff. They treated us very well there and had excellent food. Apparently a lot of celebs go there since there’s a bunch of photos of all of them on the wall. After dinner, we took a walk down a very steep hill to go down to Little Italy/North Beach district. Kristen was feeling very goofy after having some wine, and we were laughing down the steps for a good 15 minutes. Cars parked on the street looked like they were ready to be tipped over just by looking at them. At one point, Kristen was trying to slide down the steps haha.

We made our way onto Columbus and I see in the corner of my eye the NY Rangers game on a bunch of TVs in a bar. I immediately walk down and sit down for a diet coke and to watch some playoff hockey. I only watched two periods because I felt bad for Kristen having to sit there. I was checking the game on Twitter throughout the evening, and the game was still going on when I got back to the hotel room. This was the game Rangers won in the third overtime! I could only imagine what time it was on the east coast, woof!

Besides going into that bar to watch the game, we got some Italian pastries for the next day. We went to Sir Francis Drake hotel for a drink at Harry Denton’s. It’s at the top of the floor with some nice views; plus it was sunset time too! The guy there made a kickass “mocktail” hahaha. All in all, that’s what happened on Day 5.

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