Travels in America – Part 4

This post covers the third in our long road trip in North America. Previous post is here. First post is here.

First Day in San Francisco

Two hours past midnight, in a dark motel room, in a strange new place, still laying in their big bed, our two boys woke up and started prattling away. Soon, all four of us, were wide awake, taking baths, browsing on the laptop, reading, playing and trying to keep our voices down, so as not to wake up the guests in the adjacent room. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is jet lag.

As soon as the small breakfast area was open for business, we went down to see what’s on the menu. Everything, from gooey donuts to strong brewed coffee, was different from what we were used to. We skipped the pastries, had a quick coffee standing up, and went out to a gray and drizzly San Francisco. We had a meeting scheduled for later in the day in the San Francisco Exploratorium, but we still had a few hours to kill, so we headed out to the nearest Safeway. And don’t take that one for granted!

You see, on our first visit to the US, two years earlier, we encountered a problem. Like most Israelis, we are accustomed to a diet rich in fresh vegetables. Salad is a staple food here and by salad, we mean fresh vegetables, finely chopped and seasoned with some olive oil, a touch of lemon juice and a sprinkle of salt. In Israel, even McDonald’s serves a good salad, freshly chopped to order. We soon found out that this is not the case in the US and within a couple of days developed an intense craving for some fresh veggies.

We were in San Diego at the time and consulted with our GPS about the nearest supermarket. The only name I was familiar with was Walmart – I had seen it bashed on internet forums often enough. So this is what we fed into the GPS, which in turn brought us to a huge Walmart store in San Diego.

We strolled from one aisle to another, itching to take out our camera and snap some pictures of these huge buckets of ice cream, pails of butter and jumbo sized milk cartons. It felt like a theme-park ride: A Walk in a Supermarket of Giants. There were no vegetables that we could see though. Eventually, I went up to one of the workers there and asked her where we might be able to find some vegetables. She pondered the question for a while and finally suggested that we may find some frozen peas in aisle four.

Fortunately, we ran into a compatriot the following day, while visiting Balboa Park. The lady sympathized with our unfulfilled veggie cravings and provided us with names of other stores, ones that actually carry fresh produce. That was how we learned of Safeway, Albertson’s, Vons and other wonderful supermarkets, where they had all the tomatoes and cucumbers our hearts desired.

Fast forward back to 2011, and here we were, on our first day in the US, pointing the GPS at the nearest Safeway, and being very pleased with ourselves for knowing where to get fresh vegetables!

San Franciscans proved to be an amenable lot, at least judging by the nice people at Safeway and the Tmobile store. Americans may be used to polite and cheerful service providers, but for us Israelis this was a true novelty. Soon enough, armed with two local mobile phones, and fully stocked in the food department, were ready to start our day.

We headed out towards the Exploratorium, to meet another Israeli family and enjoy our first day of sightseeing. Driving through the streets of San Francisco was challenging, but not because it’s a difficult city to drive in. IsraeliDad, our designated driver, was still adjusting to the sheer size of our vehicle, while I was trying to figure out how to operate the GPS app on my iPhone. There were streets we were getting to see more than once on the way, including a very redundant crossing of the Golden Gate Bridge, which cost us 6$.

Eventually, we arrived at our destination, the Palace of Fine Arts, located just east of the Presidio and south of the Golden Gate Promenade by the sea. Having circled the ceremonious structure twice, we finally parked at tiny Lyon Street. It was a beautiful street, with majestic houses in white, pink and gray, ornate and almost sculpted, echoing the Palace laying across the lake on the other side of the road. The area was exquisitely landscaped too, with small green plots and huge pottery containers holding topiary sculptures next  each house. Each house had its own garage entrance, leaving exactly one parking spot available next to the sidewalk before the next garage entrance began. It felt almost like we were trespassing on some grand estate.

Looking around for a pay meter or some other way for us to pay our dues to the local powers to be, we saw none. The signs on the streets informed us that parking was limited to two hours at a time. With no visible system of marking the beginning of our session, we wondered how can this rule be enforced, and worried that maybe we were missing on some mystic method of operation, familiar only to locals. Eventually, we gave up on trying to figure this out, and walked away, hoping that we don’t end up having to release our vehicle from the local pound on the end of our very first day in the USA.

The Palace of Fine Arts

The Palace of Fine Arts, where the San Francisco Exploratorium resides, reminded me of similar structures we had seen in Balboa Park, in San Diego, which had been built for the The 1915-16 Panama-California Exposition. As I later learned, this was actually the case here as well. The Palace of Fine Arts was built for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, held between February and December 1915. Just like in San Diego, a set of uniquely designed structures had been created for the sole purpose of housing the fair. These fancy constructions were highly decorative, but not very strong, intended to be torn down by the end of the Exposition. Indeed, most of them were. The Palace of Fine Arts, along with its surrounding artificial lagoon and gardens, was saved thanks to public pressure, and duly augmented to be turned into a fully functional building. I am happy to report that by 2009, two years prior to our visit, the place had finally been retrofit to withstand earthquakes.

The Palace has been the home of the Exploratorium since 1969. This hands-on science museum was breaking new grounds back then, teaching science through experience. The project was the vision of one man – Dr Frank Oppenheimer. He was the younger brother of “the other Dr Oppenheimer”, the director of the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos. In fact, Dr Frank was also part of Los Alamos team, as were many of the leading physicists of the time. You’d think the nation would show him some gratitude for his service, but instead he was put on the stake by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and sent into exile, to herd cows in Colorado. It was nearly a decade later, before he could go back to the realm of science, and that was in the capacity of a high school teacher. Oppenheimer fell in love with science education, and when he was finally offered a university position again, he focused on teaching, and creating what he called a “library of experiments”. This eventually evolved into an interactive science center: the Exploratorium.

As for our own first-hand impression, I’m afraid we were slightly overwhelmed by the place. I’m not sure whether it was the jet lag, the large juvenile crowds, or maybe our initial expectations were set too high, but what was supposed to be a pleasant dip into our favorite element, turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. The Exploratorium was like a huge warehouse (Warehouse 13 anyone?) with two levels filled with various hands-on exhibits, covering a plethora of topics. Some of them were quite complicated, and demanded an in-depth explanation in physics to figure them out. IsraeliDad has a degree in Physics, so he was thrilled with some of the demonstrations, but it was a bit too much for the kids to take in.

At the Exploratorium

We did enjoy meeting another traveling family in the Exploratorium. The Rezniks had set out on a similar, yet more ambitious journey, five months earlier. More ambitious not only because their travel plans spanned nine months, but also because they were a larger family, with two boys and two girls. Hemmy Reznik first contacted a few weeks prior to their departure, having found my blog online. We had been in touch ever since, with us keeping track of their progress across the USA, while preparing for our own trip. As with many online friendships, moving on to the “real world” arena was pretty seamless.

It was fairly easy to spot Hemmy and his wife Ronit. Both parents had large backpacks strapped on their backs, the tell tale sign of parents arriving into town via public transportation, carrying extra clothes, food and everything else necessary for traveling with four children in tow. They seemed surprisingly relaxed, allowing their kids to wander at will in the huge hangar, while enjoying a steaming cup of coffee with us in the hall. I couldn’t help but wonder if we would be the same several months into our journey. Above all, they were easy to spot because they were compatriots, and Israelis stick out in any crowd (many would add, like a sore thumb, but that would be unpatriotic of me). As we enjoyed out coffees and mutual talk, the boys struck their own affinities and were playing together within minutes.

We spent a couple of hours in the Exploratorium, after which the kids decided we had enough, and so we all stepped out to look for a place to eat. The surrounding area was surprisingly lacking in what everyone assured us would be everywhere in America: fast food chains where we can get the kids some fries. Eventually, we settled on a nice pizza parlor, and actually got to enjoy some San Francisco sunshine. Until it started raining, that is.

Having made tentative plans to meet again somewhere in Wyoming, we said our goodbyes, and made our way back to the car. Whew – no parking ticket! We did notice a white mark on the car, and I can only guess this was part of the mysterious system monitoring parking times. We didn’t stay around to see who was in charge of making these white marks, though, and drove back to the hotel. It was early afternoon, but hey, we’d been up since 2AM and desperate to get some sleep!

Tweet This Post