Travelog for: Orkku Orava

Jeanne took me to Union Square for lunch and holiday sight seeing.

On the way to Macy’s windows we saw this guy painting, I got some points toward my life mission of becoming a cultured squirrel. 



How much is this doggy in the window?  He is adoptable from the SPCA.



and here is a cat, we got there at nap time.



This lady represents a San Francisco legend.  In the olden days, up until the 1940s and 1950s, all the ladies wore hats, white gloves and Finnish squirrels on their shoulders when they shopped. 



The Union Square tree is artificial this year.   Bah, humbug, too symmetrical. 





This is a castle made of sugar in the St. Francis Hotel lobby.



We had Ten Zaru and hot tea for lunch.  Don't tell Noodles what his mom ate. It's a raw egg in a cracked shell, quail, we think.  She said it is okay; they never serve Noodles' species because it is protected.  However, we will need to keep him out of Alaska.





Then we went to the Palace Hotel where gingerbread houses representing sights around the city are made for charity.  Our favorite is the Farmer’s Market.



These Victorian houses are called, “the painted ladies.”


Can you see someone in the mirror?  The Golden Gate Bridge will be 75 years old in the Spring.



The sign says, “Occupy the North Pole.”



On the way to the bus stop we picked up bagels and veggie shmear for the gang at home.  Then Jeanne got a whiff of high quality, um, second-hand smoke and sat down. I don't remember anything after that.

Your very mellow

Orkku Orava

It was my turn to go out looking for Christmas decorations.

Waiting the at doctor’s office is more fun when you are busy taking pictures.  We liked this tree.



We stopped at a classic American diner founded in 1947.  You can also get tee-shirts, souvenirs, old-fashioned candy and gum, and hear retro music. They are decorated for the December holidays, festive and cheerful.  If you sit at the counter, the jute box selection is within reach but we chose a small table.





What should we order?  



We decided on coca cola and a hot turkey sandwich, complete with mashed potatoes, veggies, gravy and cranberry sauce.  This place prides itself on lumpy mashed potatoes in the belief that this his how your mom would have cooked at mid-century.





This is an antique shop’s idea of mid-century Christmas decor.



I took a ride in a wreath in a red wagon at the plant shop.



Everything in these windows at the hardware store is lit up and moving.







I pretended to sit on santa’s lap even though there is a window between us.



Enjoying the lumps, your

Orkku Orava

Jeanne took BarryO and me out on errands and to see Christmas decorations.  We loved this tree in a hotel lobby.



A package arrived at home and I got the honor of cutting it open.



Before I finished cutting, out jumped DuDu!!



And right behind him was DuDette!  Home for Christmas!



They showed us postcards from Nuriayasmin and told us all about their journey.



Then we did a group hug.



We showed them the room we are decorating for our friend, The Christmas Elf Bear, who will be home Christmas Eve.    We started laughing until we couldn’t stop and jumped up and down on the soft bed. Such good friends.



Ciao for now,

Orkku Orava

Noodles is hatched!!  A new ToyVoyager has arrived!

Mom, snowy owls eat rodents.  (O)(O)

Hi Mom,

Noodles was no sooner out of his egg when we took him to a 3-D movie,"Hugo", which we all enjoyed a lot.  Noodles is a wild bird of prey but his Mom is watching him like a hawk so he doesn't eat one of us.  Lots of excitement here.  We got caught in a traffic jam on the way to the movie because some guy shot it out with the cops at a traffic stop, cops were not hit but the guy might not survive; his passenger drove off with the car so the coppers blocked off the streets.  Yikes, this really is the Wild West.  There was no time for popcorn but we get another movie soon!  Yay!!

He he he!  BarryO couldn't look at the screen during the scary parts.  We think he is afraid of heights.  







Hugs and safe journey to you, Mom,

Your,

Orkku Orava

We heard Santa’s sleigh bells and went outside to greet our Elf Bear,
home for Christmas.




“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight!!”

We took a walk through Yerba Buena Gardens and sat in the sun. The sun shown through this ship and made big shadows.



This building is the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. We went inside to check out the SECA Biennial awards show and a 50-year retrospective.





This is my favorite work in the show.



SECA is the Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art.  Jeanne says is is okay to just walk fast past the stuff that doesn't interest me.  Good to know that. .  This is David Best who won a SECA award in 1977.  We took his picture from a documentary because we like his face. There is also a lot of good people watching in the galleries, lots of young hip viewers.



This one has lots of birds, I like that because there must be trees nearby.





This is a city view in black and white; the colors are reflections on the glass.





Ooh, food!  I love the title.  We will have ice cream later.





On my way to becoming a cultural squirrel. 

Your Orkku Orava

Jeremy and I took a walk on Grant Avenue to see the preparations for Lunar New Year.  You can buy everything you need for the new year at the Flower Fair, stuff like oranges & tangerines, flowers, plants, pin wheels, and red envelops. This will be the Year of the Dragon but the only zodiac animal we saw was a tiger!  Jeremy liked that!   We stopped and listened to Chinese Opera and saw people playing cards by the Goddess of Democracy.  We found a replica of the first school house in California, just our size, very popular with the pigeons. 

Gung Hay Fat Choy,

Orkku Orava

Hi Mom and all my nice friends,
Jeremy and I took a hike up a hidden path.



We found hydrangeas in bloom on this sunny January day.



A neighborhood myth is that there is no parking but obviously there is a space available here for your horse.



“High on a hill” we spread out our blanket and caught some sun.



Soon we were pondering the age-old question, “can the meaning of life be found in park bench graffiti?”



This one answers the question I saw at an art show.  Remember my favorite art work? Here it is:



For you movie buffs:  This is the apartment building where Agnes Moorehead fell out of an eighth floor window, then Humphrey Bogart went to the roof to avoid being seen in the elevator and ran down this very fire escape.

“...the shots of him climbing down the apartment fire escape are somehow claustrophobic and vertiginous all at once....”  -- Steve-O In “Noir of the Week”, 20 March 2006.



Bogie then caught a cable car across the street.



In the next scene he is shown at Powell and Market but that was a continuity error as he would have had to take the Cable Car going this opposite way to get to Market Street.


The Movie is “Dark Passage”, one of our favorites. This stained glass window is in the lobby of the apartment building where I am staying.  We stopped here to catch our breath and laugh about our adventures today.  Jeremy is a riot, so much fun; he has a high pitched voice similar to mine.    He he,



Bye for now,

Orkku Orava

Jeremy and I spent a day at Ocean Beach.  This is the ruins of Sutro Baths with Seal Rocks nearby in the Pacific Ocean.







Here is a zoom of Seal Rocks.



This hill near the Cliff House is made of graywacke Franciscan sandstone rock.  The exposed section forms steps just the right size for us to climb.










Someone left this object here.  Seems to be a skull figure, an omen, perhaps, indication that the place is haunted?  We didn't touch it, just left it where we found it.



Of course, we took some time to sunbathe and giggle.  It was so warm, Jeanne took off her jacket.




The windmill, tulip garden and Beach Chalet are in Golden Gate Park across the Great Highway from Ocean Beach.  We must remember to come back here when the tulips bloom.



We posed here for one of our regular ToyVoyager members, can you guess who?  Maybe visiting this Roald Amundsen monument would get a ToyVoyager partial credit for visiting (or learning about) an elusive continent.    Amundsen’s ship was displayed on this spot for many years but is now in Oslo.





We stopped for a leisurely meal at The Beach Chalet where we found an easy virtual geocache based on 1936 Depression Works Progress Administration murals.  Dungeness crab is in season and was so sweet and wonderful with sour dough bread.





Then we walked on the beach at sunset.













Bye for now,

Orkku Orava

Hi Mom and all my friends,

It is very exciting, a new ToyVoyager has arrived.  He is a famous comic German pirate bear, named Pitzelpatz, who has been traveling a lot around North America. He is still wearing his Santa outfit.  He he!  Santa himself carried him the last segment of the trip; Santa likes to do a little extra volunteering in the off-season, the Christmas Spirit continues into wintery January. .



Cheerful Cheerio had the honor of helping him out of his travel coach.







Then my host introduced him to the other ToyVoyagers here:  DuDu from Shanghai, her own TVs: DuDette, Jeremy, and Noodles; and me.

We had a welcoming blackboard waiting for Pitzelpatz where Jeremy showed him a few things to know about this stop on his travels.   Eureka (I have found it!) is the State of California motto, oro en paz is part of the City of San Francisco motto (gold in peace, iron in war),  The 49ers is the local football team, wait till next year ; and K2 is the nickname for Jeanne's top floor apartment; you are welcome to plant your flag when you complete the assent.  



We are happy to learn that Pitzelpatz is a famous comic character; he will do his best to amuse us.  He printed out a Pitzelpatz coloring book for our bedtime reading.  He he, he is Pitzelpatz, the pirate!







Here he is after we tucked him in, isn’t he cute:



We are listening to a rainstorm now,

Bye for now,

Orkku Orava

DuDette and I travelled to Oakland. California by city bus and Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train.

This is the Alameda County Courthouse.  Oakland is the Alameda County seat.



We spent the day at The Oakland Museum of California which limits its collection to California topics, split into three levels:  art, history and nature.  The nature section is closed for an upgrade so we thought we could do the two sections but it really was too much for one day as there were also two special exhibits we wanted to see before they closed. 

You can see John Muir’s influence all over the museum and one of the special exhibits was about him.  We couldn’t take photos but we really enjoyed seeing a replica of part of his cabin at Yosemite.  He cut out three windows in the roof so he could see the views of Yosemite Falls.  They lit up posters to show what the views looked like.  It was really small like a rustic Finnish sauna. 


The pond in the foreground is actually the flooded roof of the museum.  We are getting a lot of rain after an unseasonal long dry spell.




If you have business at the courthouse, you could have lunch at these tables and enjoy a view of Lake Merritt.







This bronze is called Foray III (1997) by Bruce Beasley (born 1939).  The Oakland Museum helped his career by doing a retrospective some years ago just when Jeanne needed to do a paper on a living artist.  She interviewed him in the galleries and did her paper on his “Pillars of Cypress,” which is a memorial to victims of a freeway collapse during an earthquake in 1989.  He got permission to re-cast rebar rubble from the freeway.  The Oakland Museum acquired that artwork but we didn’t find it today. 

This is his Foray III:




Here is an Architectural Panel (1931) by Jacob Berg.  It was removed from the facade of a downtown Oakland shop.  Many buildings in downtown Oakland are in the Art Deco style, the most famous of which is the well preserved Paramount Theater.




I think this is rather cool as it connects to the Alameda County Courthouse shown in my first photo. 










This painting is called Yosemite Valley (1868) by Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902).  Historians give this kind of art some of the credit for encouraging westward migration.



Peace,



Orkku Orava

MERRY CHRISTMAS MUM!!!!!

I missed you so much in these days... 

Oh well, we went spending the Christmas time at Francy's parents, in the mountain.

We expected a nice winter landscape but no, there was no snow and it was sunny and quite hot... but we still had a Christmas tree!



We placed there all the gifts we have been shopping for...



...and before night, many others appeared!

We're curious, who knows what will be inside? 



Well, Francy let us open what looks like her most important present!



It's kinda diffucult job when you're just a few centimeters tall... but we are a team! 



So, here it is! An e-book reader! 







Looks cool, mmmh? 

Oh well mum, I would love to tell you more about my Christmas holidays as we did quite a lot of things, we baked a lot and then celebrated the New Year... but the other Voyagers here are getting impatients to update their blogs as well so I have to leave them the pc now... you know, we only have one for the three of us! 

Talk to you again very soon! 

Two of us are leaving soon and we had a little going away party with lots of hugs.  Can you guess which of us are leaving?

Bye Bye, San Francisco!  The Squirrel and I took one last walk to the bay and said goodbye. Then Jeremy joined me at Aquatic Park where we jumped into a ship which will take us out to sea.   When we arrive overseas, we will split up and go to separate hosts.  We are both very excited we will be able to jump around in the snow!!  It is hard to say goodbye but we will read each others’ travelogs.

Wish us bon voyage!

Orkku Orava