GraceinSF

what a great place. i lived in this amazing flat on wicker park ave. chicago is my favorite american city. hands down. if i could just handle the winters…

This is a very very picturesque area. There are places that were used in some of Yimou Zhang’s films like ‘Hero’. Postcard perfect. I went in December and there was a lot of snow in places. Also some surprising alpine like villages.

the strangest thing about this area is that it is like a little oasis in the middle of this deep arizona desert. there is a big lake with bass fishing and jumping off of cliffs. and the craziest thing of all, patagonia is a wine growing region in arizona. it’s all too bizarre.

This was my favorite place in Yosemite. We went hiking for hours and it could only have been better if we had been prepared to keep hiking and set up camp for the night. The air, water, meadows, grasses are all so pristine and quiet. We didn’t see too many other people and at times it felt like we had discovered the land we were walking on.

i was really lucky to live on a houseboat here for a few years. friends had always warned about how awful houseboat living was. small, damp spaces, crazy people. so glad i didn’t listen. not these houseboats! it was huge! with many decks and a super tall danish fireplace. anyway, sausalito is special. loads of tourists are dumped daily downtown for overpriced art galleries and crappy sweatshirt shops. but to get a different feel, go for a hike up in the hills. there are stairway trails that are challenging but the views are something to be seen. walk around on the northern end of town by the houseboats and discover a wonderful area filled with old artists, writers, fisherman, etc. you can take a walk down by the marsh and if you’re a bird lover there are so many amazing birds to see! it’s all quite lovely.

my boyfriend and i brought his parents down who had never left the usa. we figured it would be pretty tame. well… we got there a day before a pretty big hurricane hit. we were stuck in the room for a few days while it passed. nevertheless, the resort which is not typically my kind of thing was fantastic! we rented a jeep and went driving up the coast which i loved. the actual town is really geared for americans, so it was kind of gross. i liked getting off the beaten path. the snorkeling wasn’t great b/c of the storms, but it was still lovely. dinner in town at ‘mi casa’ was really wonderful, a bit pricey though.

I was an exchange student here in high school so this was the first San Francisco I lived in. I really loved it and the people and the wonderful food. I drink maté to this day.