Dia de los muertos - Day of the Dead

We managed to take part in two Day of the Dead festivities this year, one in San Jose and the other in San Francisco. The one in San Jose was held during the day on Sunday 1 November and was a lovely community based festival. It began in the park near the San Jose Museum of Modern Art and then they handed our marigold flowers and sticks of incense to the audience and we all 'paraded' behind the main group to a shrine. Everyone who had the marigold flowers then added them to a alter for the prayers.

I don't know too much about the formalities of the festival but I did feel that I learnt a bit from the San Jose festival. It was very family based and it was quite moving seeing people bring photos of loved ones who had passed away.

The parade in San Francisco was held on the evening of Monday 2 November in the Mission district. There was alot of people and had a very different feel to the other procession. I didn't take any photos as it was packed and the lighting was very dark. Many local San Francisconians seem to get involved and dress up and take part. However it seems to be a bit of a drunken party for many. For more photos from the San Jose event go to my flickr page!

Some Tasty, Tasty Treats...

So we have been eating ALOT while we are away and I thought that I should share some of the good eating experiences that we have had so far...

Iguanas is in San Jose and is the home of the burritozilla. It's this great little Mexican fast food place that is open until 3am on the weekends and turns out yummy nachos, tacos and burritos very quickly to the hungry and drunk masses. I love their nachos with the jack cheese, pinto beans and beef as well as the tiny taco... love the tiny taco!

We have also eaten at a fantastic Southern Mexican food place Mezcal in San Jose. Really authentic food that is fresh and delicious. The staff were very friendly and knowledgeable as well and when we looked unsure about what things were, they came and gave us little samples to help us out. They also look like they do some mean tequila cocktails so we may need to go back!

While in San Francisco we went to a tiny Italian place that felt like it was in the middle of nowhere but had some great food and wine! It's called Barbambino and they have taken on the multi plate, sharing food thing, like many of us are used to in Melbourne. The place was packed and we were lucky to get a table without making a reservation. We had a plate of hand cut prosciutto (yum, but we expected bread with it!), Mark had pasta with rabbit, I had pumpkin ravioli with an amaretto biscuit dressing, weird but delicious and we finished with a beautiful cheese platter which entailed having their cheese expert come and talk to us. The food was excellent, service a little on the pretentious side, however in a country where we thought that 'share plates' would be bigger than Texas, it certainly was not! I got 6 ravioli!!! Yum but still a little hungry if you get what I mean. Definitely recommend to visit, just order a little more.

An Aussie getting into a little Halloween spirit

The MaMas decided to try and get into some Halloween spirit in San Jose by seeing a zombie film, on Halloween eve. There is a huge cinema complex opposite our hotel so it seemed like something fun to do. We had a choice between Where the Wild Things Are and Zombieland, the latter seemed to get us into the Halloween spirit. I even wore my 'In Case of zombies' hoodie from Threadless so I felt very prepared.

We didn't count on some weird Christian people in the plaza ranting about God and Satan, at first I wasn't sure if they were just joking around. They looked a little too punk rock in their leather jackets with I heart God on the back of them. It was a little confrontational and bizarre but did put us in the mood for some violent zombie killing action.

The film was great! Very entertaining, enough gore and guts but also very funny. Woody Harrelson was hilarious and so was Bill Murray's cameo, though I am unsure of this 'Ghostbusters 3'?!!! All in all a great night that ended with our favourite Mexican fast food, Iguanas! Yum!

We Love Bears!

We love bears in all forms.... wooden ones...

Manly bearded ones...

I'm even trying to be one!!!

Inspired by our trip to Muir Woods, just outside of San Francisco.

A Bit of a Hike!

Mark and I decided to go for a bit of a hike from our hotel to go through China Town heading up to North Beach and Little Italy in San Francisco. We always laugh as we walk excessively while we are away! It was a great day and you always get to see parts of town that you normally wouldn't get to see.

China Town was insane on a Sunday, everyone was out doing their food shopping and I always get a little freaked out by the smell of the food. It's like a smell overload! I also think that all China Town's smell the same.

Little Italy and North Beach were beautiful. We stopped at a place called Calzone's as we saw someone having an awesome looking Bloody Mary! It was spicy and refreshing. I shyed away from eating the olives however. Mark braved it and I thought trying 3 olives stuffed with jalepenos a little too much after such a walk.

We also found some pretty cute shops. There was a pet supply store that had cute Halloween costumes for animals. I would of loved a glow in the dark skeleton costume for Nina but I'm sure she wouldn't be too impressed. They didn't have any cat dancers (Miss Nina's favourite toy) but we did find something similar which hopefully she will like just as much.

After many hills and checking out lots of gorgeous houses, including one with two pretty kittys in the window, we finally made it to the water and indulged in a Ghiardelli hot chocolate fudge sundae. Thank god we have cast iron stomachs when you think about Bloody Marys, icecream, chocolate... urgh, it's enough to make you sick! By the way, Calzone's was so good, we even walked back there for dinner and our plates were clean!!!

Getting crafty

I should mention that a couple of places that we have loved are:

Cask - 17 Third Street at Market in San Francisco. It is a premium whiskey store but also had other spirits and beautiful vintage cocktail books. We drooled alot in there!

We ate great and reasonably priced Mexican food at Tropisueno Mexican Kitchen - 75 Yerba Buena Lane, San Francisco (it's near the galleries and museums). The nachos and the meat taco was excellent, the fish taco was great except I didn't like the battered fish, prefer it just grilled.

We shopped it up at G-Star San Francisco at 76 Geary Street, well actually Mark did. Great service, store not as big as the New York one but still pretty great.

We hit two galleries today, the Museum of Craft and Folk Art and checked out the Open Source Embroidery exhibition which was very hands on. It looks at the space between hand made craft and traditional crafts and the use of new technologies. I even did some weaving on a project where by people can learn how to weave and the strips woven will be sewn together to make blankets for the homeless. The girls at the museum were lovely, very helpful and we had chats about how the museum works, the changes from when the museum moved venues and where else to go! We had a great time there.

We also went to the Design Museum on Sutter Street. This is opposite from where we normally stay in San Francisco. There was an exhibition of wood pieces there. It was interesting but also a little repetitive in the construction of the exhibition. I would be interested to see what other exhibitions they have there during the year.

A bit of San Francisco Culture & a Killer Burger!

Mark and I decided that what we needed was a bit of culture to entertain us and generally make us feel more at home in San Francisco. We decided to visit the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Some of the exhibitions we viewed were:

• Selection of works from the collection, including Mondrian, Max Beckmann works, Duchamp and Matisse.
• The fantastic multimedia works by Candice Breitz - always very powerful, a little uncomfortable also.
• Postwar photography from Japan.
• Contemporary photography from China, Japan and Korea.
• Sensate: Bodies and Design - the bone lamp was pretty cool!
• Between Art and Life: contemporary paintings and sculpture from the collection.
  

I took loads of photos at the Museum, which can be viewed on my flickr site for more info. Here are some key works that I just loved!

We also visited the San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum which is an amazing building, very reminiscent of Melbourne's own Fed Square, with lots of jagged shapes jutting out. The exhibitions visited:

• There's a Mystery There: Sendak on Sendak - great to see in conjunction with the release of the film "Where the Wild Things Are".
  
• Jews on Vinyl - one of my personal favourites, beautiful installation and a great take on simple yet valuable participation.
• As it is Written: Project 304,805 - this beautiful exhibition showed a woman who is continually in the gallery, going through the process of writing a torah.

The Contemporary Jewish Museum was fascinating and fun. It was a great example of clever curation of works that were interesting to both people of the Jewish faith but also non-Jewish people. They had mixed modern works with traditional and hisorical artefacts to give viewers a understanding of various aspects of Jewish life and faith. A must see for anyone in San Francisco.

For lunch we found a little Italian café and supply store and stocked up on yummy cheese, salami, bread and salads before walking down near the water to chill out and eat. The seagulls appeared to be very large and domineering. They kind of freaked me out a little, the way they just sauntered along coming closer and closer to us!

After chilling out in the lovely San Francisco sun with some $2 pint beers, we headed to our hotel home to rest up before taking on the Burger Bar which had just opened at Macy’s in Union Square, for what we had heard was some pretty special burgers!

My friend Jess had alerted me to this new Burger Bar by Hurbert Keller who is a bit of a superstar when it comes to meat an sundaes. There is a $60 burger on the menu and trust me alot of people were ordering it! We stuck with some smaller and lower priced burgers but they were DELICIOUS! Both Mark and I said that we would have to go again before leaving San Francisco. We ordered a make your own sundae which unfortunately took forever to get to us, but then they gave us a HUGE icecream sundae, involving 6 scoops of icecream, on the house! Yay! I even got to see the man, Hurbert Keller- I would of liked to have gotten a photo for Jess but it will just have to wait till next time.

Mmmmm.... burgers...... drool....