Enchanted woods, beach, plus golden gates and homemade Italian pizza!

On Friday Aki, Toddle and I, drove off to Muir Woods home of the giant redwood trees.  We had the good fortune to find the perfect parking spot in the shade when someone left after driving round what looked like a completely full car park once.  No sooner had we set off down a path to the entrance when Aki spotted that my water bottle was leaking and we returned back to the car to remove soggy items and dry out my bag!  We were then able to make our way to the visitors centre for some lunch and plan our hike, which reminded me of my walk a week ago in Santa Barbara.  Big Toddle managed to meet some bears that didn’t seem too grizzly and allowed him to have his picture taken!  walk was so relaxing and it was a joy to see these incredibly tall trees, hear running water and bird song and smell an earthy freshness - hard to describe.  (I’ve bought some redwood incense to try and remind me of it.)

Aki and I had fun taking pictures (being inside the huge hollows, hugging them, etc), although at one point she dropped her camera and it fell almost in the water.  Thankfully it stopped by some rocks, which left there mark on the viewing screen.  Aki was quick to reframe the situation from something negative in to a positive by saying at least she’d always remember our time in Muir Woods whenever she saw the scratch on her camera!    

I found a cute little wooden wishing box in the gift shop with my name on it.  Emily is from the Latin for “Eager” and it says “You are Pioneering and Ambitious”.  How it works is you write a wish on a piece of paper and put it inside your box.  Every night at bed time, you hold your Dream Box and think of your dream.  Legend has it, if done faithfully your dream will come true.  

These lovely pictures are of Muir Beach, first from the car park, then on the beach and last one is of Aki relaxing on a plank she found.  We chilled here for sometime just admiring the view and listening to the ocean waves crash on the shore, very peaceful.  I wish I'd packed my swim suit and towel to do a spot of sun bathing!  

On our way back to San Francisco we climbed in the car to a high view point close to the Golden Gate Bridge.  I’ve been so lucky that the weather has been clear and sunny enabling me to take some great snaps of stunning scenery.  We took a little detour down to a place called Sausalito I think before going over the bridge and then navigating our way to the Twin Peaks. 

From there we viewed the GG Bridge from the other side - less impressive in my humble opinion given how long it took us to get there!  Still was worth exploring and meant we were on track to get back to Berkeley campus in time to watch the sun set.  

We stopped on the way at a supermarket to pick up pizza topping ingredients because Aki’s Italian friend Irene had invited a group of post doc friends over for home made pizza and to watch a movie.   We made it in the nick of time to see the sun set - beautiful pink coloured sky!  Aki is so lucky to have this round the corner from her lab to admire whenever she wants to.  then left for the pizza party (I learnt the secret of making good pizza dough is adding potatoes) and had good food, company and a real laugh watching the original Japanese version of Shall We Dance - much better than Richard Gere and J Lo!  We certainly packed a lot in to the day and I slept soundly.

Today we’re off to Sonoma for some wine tasting, I can’t wait!