The San Francisco chronicle continues…

The day after getting back from the ski trip, I had arranged to meet with Susie (suzums from dA). We met up by the Ripley’s Believe it or Not! museum by Fisherman’s Wharf, mainly because it’s just about the only place I knew how to get to reliably on the bus. James and I headed down there and had a coffee with Susie before heading out for a walk.

We went to a nearby art gallery first. The gallery dude was very helpful, spending a lot of time talking to us about the art. I really enjoyed a series of paintings of Paris made by a Russian artist named Liudmila Kondakova. They were brightly colored and each focused on an element of Paris that stood out to her, like a cafe at night, or a peaceful spring scene. The interesting thing was that many of the locations pictured were entirely fictitious, which allowed her quite a bit of freedom in creating. They reminded me a lot of my own impressions of Paris, and if I had the thousands of dollars required, I’d own one for sure. Check them out here. “The Paris” is my favorite.

The gallery also had some etchings that Picasso made to illustrate a book of poetry called Corps Perdu. They were very simple line drawings, some of them only consisting of a handful of strokes. It’s amazing how much he could convey with these few lines though. It’s no wonder that he was considered the master of the line. His ability to do more with less is very inspirational.

After browsing the gallery, we took the bus to Chinatown for lunch. I was hungry so it didn’t occur to me to take a “before” picture of our dim sum. It was more appealing than the “after” scene. The three of us ate for $15. There’s also a picture of a heap of dead pigs in the back of a truck. This may or may not be appetizing to you. Sorry about that.

After lunch, we wandered around Chinatown for a while, and then decided to look for Union Square. We did a lot of walking up and down San Francisco’s hilly streets. I discovered that surprisingly, walking down hills was much rougher on my bad knee than walking up hills. Go figure.

We wandered around Union Square for a while, checking out the stores. There wasn’t anything any of us needed though, so eventually we stopped for a drink. We said bye to Susie, and then headed home. It was great meeting her, and maybe we’ll see each other again. It would be a great reason to go to Hawaii, as if I need additional reasons to go to Hawaii! 😛

That night I had dinner with James, Alex, Diamond, Diamond’s friend Colleen, and Colleen’s boyfriend Shane. We had a good time and pretty decent (if outrageously priced) Indian food. There’s Colleen in the last pic in this series. What a hottie 😛

Afterwards, we did some bar-hopping. That was entertaining, until I forgot about my knee and ended up collapsing in a heap in the middle of a bar. James was helping me up, pointing at me, and yelling, “Skiing! Skiing!” as a sort of explanation in case people thought I had injected some serious drugs or something. Despite the blinding pain, that was hilarious.

That was kind of the end of the night anyway, so we squeezed into a cab and headed home.