local

SFO-day trip- Painted steps

This is a continuation of yesterday's post on the San Francisco day trip to Presidio Park and the hike on Lover's lane. 

After our lunch at Gracias Madre, we went to visit the Painted steps on 16th avenue also refered to as the Painted Mosaic or Tiled steps. 

This is our second visit the steps and I remembered visiting the steps within a few months after they had just been created and opened to the public. We had visited this with San's cousins family and had a lot of fun taking pictures. Kept searching the blog and found nothing! Then saw a few photos from FB. Then spent an hour trying to figure out why I never posted anything, or if it was one of those things where the submit button was never pressed!

Turns out our first visit was on Labor day of 2014. That 4th of July was my fateful trip to India (the plane with engine failure trip as I call it), followed by a last minute trip to Jaipur, flying to Taiwan with 3 hour window after landing in Mumbai, coming back to bay area only to realize MIL had a cancer scare, presenting at a conference while all this was going on.. it was a rollercoaster of a month and somehow, there was a "post backlog"! This photo stood out!

Looking back we visited the hidden garden stairs which was done in 2013. There are three such tiled steps in SFO. Two around 16th street and one 4 miles away in Lincoln park. We visited the two steps in 16th street yesterday.

The first one goes up from Moraga and 16th up a block. It is beautiful and has no bends. you can see all the way to the top. Once you go to the top, you go right a hundred feet and there is another step that leads up to the next street and a staircase that takes you to the top of that hill. 

The views from this point are amazing! you see the ocean, downtown, the layers of buildings on the hill and it takes your breath away!

This is from the top after climbing the 16th avenue steps. 

Once you go to vista point two roads up you see this..

Once we spent some time at the top, we came back down to 16th Avenue and after walking two blocks, we walked down the hidden garden steps. This one bends around and is also very beautiful. 

Took some pictures on the stairs.. (San did take some pictures of me for a change and that moment was captured!)

We had some homemade tea and snacks, courtesy of our friends and drove back. San Francisco is beautiful and we suburbanites have not explored this big city at all. Having lived here for more than 2 decades, we have come to the realization that there is plenty of sight seeing left to do in SFO!

We can do it, one vista point at a time!

SFO- day trip - Presidio - Lover's lane trail

We had a great time today at SFO. Went with friends to a lot of different places.. First stop was Presidio park. The highlight was Lover's lane..

This photo of a photo in the making was captured by my neighbor and friend. Think she is starting a trend of taking pictures of folks taking pictures during the hikes. I for one, like it! There are not that many candid shots of me in the last few years as I am the one taking pictures all the time. 

Left early from Cupertino, parked next to Inspiration point and caught a view of Alcatraz and everything in that general direction!

From there we walked on the Lover's Lane trail down to Lyon street. Stopped to take pictures on the way. It was such a beautiful and pleasant day and the colors were just vibrant everywhere. The wildflowers were in bloom on every slope giving everything a yellow and orange hue!

that picture made my day! 

This place was just amazing.. eucalytpus trees on both sides and a zig zag trail. The smells, the shadows, everything was perfect!

The trail ends at a gate.. then you have to cross the street and go down some manicured shrub lined steps that end up in a heart at the base. If it was not for alltrails, we would have definitely missed a lot of the stuff! 

I had some fun posing in a relief wall..

This was followed by a walk on the lake trail to see the lake. We were late for lunch, so we did not spend much time there. Just took pictures and rushed back to the parking lot.

Had an amazing lunch at the vegan place on Mission street called Gracias Madre (this is our second trip there, our first was last Valentines day just a month before everything shut down!). How things have changed in a year?! 

From there we went to see more sights.. topic for tomorrows blog.. 

Time to edit some photos..

Sanborn Park and Peak point

Another weekend and another local hike. This is the first time I am going through this trail in Sanborn in Saratoga (San has visited it many times before).

It was a good day to hike. We did the 8.4 mile hike in 2 1/2 hours and still had enough stops for pictures and selfies!

Good thing was the vistas every 30 minutes or so! 

There must have been some dust on the iPhone camera.. got these weird rays in most pictures that made them interesting!

as long as I keep walking, San keeps smiling! Should really make sure my knees, ankles and hips are in shape for as long as possible! 

Loved the morning hike! We have slowly but steadily covered a lot of the trails in the Saratoga-Los Gatos area. More to come..