Sarah's Visit

My sister Sarah and I were supposed to go to the U2 concert in Oakland on June 16th and she had already booked her flight out when we heard the terrible news that Bono had major back surgery, postponing ALL of the North American tour. (I am SO glad that I took the opportunity to go see them in Las Vegas back in Oct when I had the chance). So, we made the most of her 2 day visit. I rearranged my schedule to have the day off and we experienced some of the treasures of the Bay area.

I picked her up from the airport and we then drove to Sprinkles where I had my first key lime cupcake of the season (they are having them DAILY all summer!!) and she had a red velvet. She thought they were ok, but she wasn't raving about them like I was. We then drove up to the De Young Museum where we saw their special exhibit "Birth of Impressionism" with 100 masterworks from the Musee D'Orsay in Paris. It was a good exhibit- and really crowded for a Tuesday afternoon, showing the high quality of the art. I loved that the exhibit showcased a few of the pieces that occurred before Impressionists such as Millet, one outside of his typical genre of painting farm laborers called "Spring, 1868-1873". I loved that they had a portrait of many of the great artists of the time who met together- Manet, Monet, Degas, and several others. They had numerous Monets, but my new favorite was one entitled "Rue Montorgueil, Paris, Festival of June 30" where you see the celebration of the people through numerous French flags. They also had Whistler's Mother, which I still do not really understand why it is such a famous and iconic painting. And Gustave Caillebotte's "Floor Scrapers" which captures the beauty of hard labor. The exhibit also taught me some new things like the term "Impressionist" actually came from one of Monet's paintings that was entitled "Impression". I had always thought that the name impressionists came from the fact that they captured moments in time, reflecting their impressions. This is definitely true but it was neat to learn that Monet's works provided the title to this monumental art movement. After the exhibit, we watched this special documentary about the lives of the major impressionist artists- Monet, Manet, Degas (who was apparently so sketchy that most of the writings about him were destroyed), and Renoir. It was a well done production but long- we spent about 40 minutes watching it and weren't able to finish before the museum closed. They went up to Giverney and walked around the gardens and it made me really want to go. My friend Lauren and I tried to go while we were in Paris but it didn't work out but we were able to go instead to Disneyland Paris which redeemed our visit. One funny moment from the documentary was that they had close captioning. One of the curators of the D'Orsay was talking about how one of Renoir's paintings caused such an uproar because it looked like the girl had grease stains on her dress. Well, the close captioning wrote it as "Greece stains" and my sister Sarah and I burst out laughing. Luckily, no one else was in there at the time but it is now one of our favorite jokes.

We then went and saw Peter Pan at the 360 degree theater. It was a beautiful day down by the ferry building- clear blue skies, a rarity for SF in the summer.

We had gotten to the theater early and so we toured the special exhibit that they had celebrating 100 years of Peter Pan. It was slightly morbid as they discussed the untimely deaths of several of the people associated with the Peter Pan story (one of the kids who formed the basis for the Darling children and then the 1st Disney cartoon voice of Peter Pan). The production itself was good- we were slightly sad thought that it wasn't the musical version, just the stage play. The whole time I had the musical songs in my head like "I Won't Grow Up" and "Ugawugawigwam". The staging was incredible with the computer graphics all along the top of the tent- the best was when they were flying over London and past all of the great monuments. It made me want to go back. We were REALLY disappointed by Tink- she was super annoying and looked like some grunge punk fairy. The other characters were quite good. And I managed to sit through this entire performance. When we told my dad that we had gone, he reminded me of the time when I was about 2 years old and they had re-released Disney's Peter Pan into theaters. It is one of his all time favorites and so he took me to a showing over at the Murray Theater. He got me popcorn and a drink and I finished them and then proceeded to put up all of the seats in the 2 rows next to us. It was only 20 minutes into the movie and I announced to my dad that I was done and it was time to go. He tried to protest and reason with me to stay but I just marched on out the door. He really wanted to see it so he took me again and he brought my mom because he thought that I might stay longer if she was there. Nope- I did the exact same thing of eating my popcorn and drink finalized by putting up the seats and then forcing my parents to go. hehe- and to think that I now love plays and movies.

Sarah and I then went to one of the restaurants of Top Chef Master Hubert Keller. Its called the Burger Bar and it is located on the 6th floor of Macy's overlooking Union Square. We got a table right next to the window over this view of the square (not very crowded for a Tuesday night).

And the food did not disappoint. I got a combination of 3 different types of sliders: one was buffalo meat, another was Angus, and the third was country natural beef. They were all AMAZING. Sarah got just a buffalo burger and she loved it. We shared some sweet potato fries which were great as well. But the real outstanding part was the Chocolate Burger.

Here it is in all of its glory- and the mouse seemed kind of a random touch. The chocolate mousse filling was layered with strawberries inside of a donut (much better than Krispy Kreme). It was so amazing. They also had a Cheesecake Burger that we wanted to try but were too full but I will definitely be trying that because it was so so good.

On Wed, I made Sarah some pumpkin waffles and we then headed up to the Presidio to visit the Walt Disney Family Museum. This was a must since we are both HUGE Disney fans and it was a great museum. It is a very large and detailed museum- we were there for over 3 hours and were rushing through the last few rooms. They had a special exhibit about Peter Pan in the basement where they had some of the original drawings and script, so appropriate after our seeing the play the night before. We were able to see his special Academy award for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs that had 7 mini statuettes alongside of the main one. It was truly fascinating to learn more about this man's life. His Aunt encouraged him to pursue his artistic talents and I am sure glad that he did. His early career was wrought with several failures. His first animation business failed and then he lost the rights to his main character, Oswald the rabbit (I had not heard of this character before the museum). But, he continued to follow his passion of creating animated art and ultimately went on to become one of the most successful movie makers of all time. The museum also showed pictures of life with his family as well as audio excerpts from colleagues and friends who remarked about Walt's experiences throughout his life. Sarah and I both remarked that it made us want to go back to Disneyland and watch all of the movies. We very highly recommend the museum to true Disney fans.

We then went to Google for dinner and wrapped up the evening by watching "So You Think You Can Dance" and playing Mario Kart on our new 46' tv :-)

I'm sorry that we weren't able to see Bono but I hope that you still had fun- I sure did!! We love having you and you are welcome back anytime ;-)