Adam Turtle, Freelance Web Design in Belfast, Northern Ireland
Since1986
Fratellis, Muir Woods and other guff *PICS*
- 16th June, 2007
- filed under: General, San Francisco
- 5 comments
The Fratellis were magic, absolute quality! Didn’t care much for the support band (who’s name unsurprisingly I’ve forgotton). I tried to take some photos, but my camera is so crap it’s unbelievable (Connor you owe me a D40!). I did however get a video of Whistle for the Choir, which didn’t turn out that great. Crowd went nuts when they played the iPod ad music (apparently they did the music for an ad campaign here). Finished, rather predictably, with Chelsea Dagger and the place just exploded. The ground actually went up and down. All in all, a short 1 hour set but worth every penny of the $18 to get in. Sold out too which was surprising. Nice venue too.
As for today, I was given the day off to take the Muir Woods and Wine Country tour. It’s one of the perks of the job that I get to go free on all the tours. This was a ‘research’ trip in a sense, means that I can describe the tour when I’m asked about it on the phone.
So Jack picked me up at 8:30 and we headed round to the other hotels to pick up the remaining 8 passengers. It was a mixed bunch – 2 from Louisianna, 3 from Austrailia, 2 from Orange County and a Japanese guy. Quite a small group, which was nice.
We headed over to Marin County, which meant we had to cross the Golden Gate bridge. I hadn’t actually got the length of the bridge yet, so this was a great way to see it. It’s pretty cool, you get a fantastic view of the bay area from it. On a side note, I saw this DVD in Virgin the other day, sounds very interesting. As I’ve said before, while the Golden Gate is the more famous of SF’s two bridges I reckon it’s not as impressive as the East Bridge (it being 5 times longer and crossing over an island).
Into Marin County then and our first stop off was at Muir Woods. I took loads of photos:
Basically the attraction to this particular park is the giant Redwood trees. They’re pretty impressive, some of them growing to nearly 300 feet. It’s a very peaceful place, I stuck on my iPod and strolled through the trail listening to the Blue Nile (a band who I’d never heard of till Music Guy gave me one of their albums, incredible stuff). An interesting piece of trivia is thatmuch of Return of the Jedi was shot here.
On from the woods, we went to Roche Winery. This was the first of three wine-tasting sessions. Due in part to my own stupidity and also my brutal honesty, I confessed I was underage when questioned and wasn’t allowed to take part in the tasting. It’s embarrasing to be treated like a minor again especially as I was the only one in the group not taking part. But I suppose I shouldn’t complain as I don’t really like wine anyway.
We then drove to Sonoma, which is a really beautiful like town in the middle of Sonoma Valley. It’s very historically significant for a number of reasons, most of which I forget. Something to do with Mexicans. Jack pointed out a few places on the way, such as where George Lucas lives (did you know that LucasArts studios is in San Francisco? It’s near the bridge.). In Sonoma I discovered that tour drivers get $5 credit at the Cheese Factory, so I got a huge burger and vintage cheddar cheese for 60c, which both rocks and compliments my wallet.
On to the next two wineries, and I’ll not bore you with the details. Again I took honesty as the best policy and opted out of the tasting. It was the same as the last two places essentially anyways. The last winery had an absolutely cracking view:
We stopped by Sausalito, a beautiful little marina town just over the bridge from San Fran. You get a great view of the city from here, but it’s the rich part of town so you can expect to pay anything up to $35 million for a place here (crikey!). We also went past San Quentin prison, which I didn’t realise was here. That’s the one that Johnny Cash played at and wrote a song about.
So the very last stop was the Marin Headlands. It’s possibly the best view of the bridge you can get. Got there just in time as the fog (actually that should be ‘The Fog’ as it’s pretty infamous in these parts) was rolling in from the sea. By the time I got back home the fog had reached the city and it had gotten pretty cold. The weather here is funny that way, Sonoma Valley was probably around 30° but just 45 minutes away the bay area was about 18° with strong winds.
My face kinda looks like Bono in this for some reason.
Just to finish with, and I wish I had the photo to prove it to you, the guy in my room was out in the city today and took a photo of a homeless guy lying up against the wall with his coin cup, sleeping bag…and new Macbook reading his emails! Chao.
Number 1, i do not owe you a D40
Number 2, you wouldn’t have been allowed it into the gig
Number 3, the Fratelli’s were in the iPod ads over here in the UK as well…
hehehe cool! the weather looks so nice! i so want to come see u! lol
So do you actually do any “work” on this placement of yours? lol
Got any new jokes?
Yeah you did get sold a crap camera, those photos look like they were taken with a phone. Nice pics though.
I do alot of work! I’ve been in at 8am for 6 days in a row! It’s not all fun and games you know.
Cool…