I am exhausted from all of the things that I’ve done this weekend!
On Saturday, I went to Lands End, an area for hiking in the northwest section of San Francisco right above ocean beach and west of Golden Gate Bridge. Lands End has a great deal of ocean views since it’s at the border of San Francisco. We got to see ruins of the Sutro Baths, pretty flowers along the paths, and a few stone structures on the beach known as Inukshuk, or Inuit stone structures. I met up with a group of interns I met in the Slack channel for Bay Area interns (many of them plan events and are looking for people to hang out with), and we spent approximately 2 hours hiking around the area and taking in the views.
Lands End
Inukshuk – final product
We even made our own Inukshuk, as you can see in the picture. I spent more time watching the structure be built than building it, but I’d like to say that I was providing moral support for the engineers.
Lands End probably isn’t the best place to go hiking if you’re looking for a quiet hike: it was very busy on the day we went and you were always surrounded by other people. I haven’t really hiked yet this summer though, so I was still happy to be exploring some new areas. I’m hoping to go hiking at more areas like Yosemite and Muir Woods, but I’ll still have to figure out the difficulties with transportation. After the hike, we walked to New Oyaji restaurant in Outer Richmond where I had some pretty good sashimi. I’ve been at this restaurant previously for ramen, but I decided that I needed to change it up a bit because I’ve been eating a lot of ramen lately.
Napa Valley
The next day, a group of us planned on going to Napa Valley. We wanted to make the 10:00AM ferry, but my roommate and I were late so we went on the next ferry. Unfortunately, the ferry only comes once an hour, so we spent the time in between getting coffee and breakfast. The trip there was quite long: we took one hour on the ferry and then another hour on the bus. Napa downtown was quaint, but the area was a lot drier than I expected. We wandered around the vineyards, but I couldn’t help but compare the scenery with the vineyards in Italy; it is much greener there than in California. Some of the best scenery I saw was on the ferry actually; we headed back right when the sun was setting, so we were able to see the city from the ocean and also see the sun setting behind the mountains while on the boat.
The view from the ferry we got when returning to the city from Napa
After a weekend full of hiking and exploring, I’m back at work. I’ve had one cup of coffee so far but feel like I might have another one soon. I’m finding it a bit difficult to balance exploration and work, but I only have about a month left so I’m trying to make the most of it! Tonight, I’ll be attending an event called Internapalooza, so keep on the lookout for a post on that this week.