California, part 2

Since our time there was so short, actually just two full days in SF, we tried to cram in as much as possible.  We did a lot of walking and I thought our feet would fall off from trekking all those hills for which SF is famous.

  We expected the weather to be coolish and it was.  I bought this very light weight down jacket there, so light that you could roll it up and put it in its pouch that was about the size of a large baked potato. We took the ferry to Sausalito and here Ruthie and I are posing near the Golden Gate Bridge.

 We saw so many flower gardens and many flowers that we could not identify.  This is a rose, but I could only tell by its foliage.

I have no idea what this flowering shrub was, but we saw it all over.  So pretty, but no fragrance.

We did quite a bit of walking in the Golden Gate Park, which runs thought the middle of the city and is even larger than Central Park in NYC.  This was at the entrance to its Japanese Garden.  We didn't go in, but peeked through the gates.

We did stroll through the Rose Garden and were treated to so many spectacular blooms like this one. 

 I am very fond of succulents and they were all over, large beds like this one with the plants jammed together and other individual plants or groupings here and there. They were growing in large fields in the country side and even clinging to the side of rocky cliffs.

I thought this one was unusual and although you can't tell from the photo, it was quite tall.

I liked this lovely container of succulents at a shop entrance.

Of course we had to take a trolley ride and after walking all day we took the trolley back to our hotel from Fisherman's Wharf.  It was quite a ride, up and down steep hills with the trolley bell clanging.

Agapanthus is a flower that you rarely see in the Northeast and if you do they are in pots because they can not tolerate a hard freeze.  But in SF and the other towns we visited they were all over.  There were huge beds of them and small groupings, and everywhere you turned you saw them.  They are quite stately, growing 3 to 4 feet high in shades of purple and white.

Here is a bed in front of a shop. Oh, how I wish I could grow them here. They are a perennial in California.

And here a beautiful bed of mixed purple and white.  Stunning!