May
27
Last Day at the Museum
Filed Under San Francisco 2009
On my last morning, I awoke to another bright and clear sky. Erin and I said our goodbyes before she went to work. I was soon out the door after that so I could get to the de Young Museum shortly after its opening time. The current museum was opened in 2005, and the architecture was designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the same firm that design the addition to the Walker Art Center here in Minneapolis. The de Young is quite an impressive building inside and out. It’s a massive structure that easily weighs down a whole block. The museum has a 9-floor tower that provides wonderful views all around. Of course the fog had rolled in by the time I got there. The 
art within the building is pretty diverse which includes a tremendously large collection of New Guinea art. A few tourist groups and school field trips were visiting the museum along with me. I ended up eating lunch there and spent some time in the sculpture garden. While the Walker has its famous “Spoonbridge and Cherry,” the de Young has a larger-than-life safety pin.
I walked over to the California Academy of Sciences building just across the way to wait for my bus back to the apartment where I packed my last few things and headed out the door. Erin and I had devised quite the sneaky plan for returning her keys. I placed them in a pair of shoes and left those just outside her locked apartment door. When she returned home, she was able to call herself and buzz her way into the main entrance then retrieve her hidden keys to get into the apartment. Brilliant! I made my way to the BART station and got to the airport just as the flight was boarding. I was glad to find out that the flight home was almost an hour shorter than the trip out due to the air currents. Back in Minneapolis, I took the lightrail and then the bus home, quite appropriate for all of the mass transit travel I’d been doing in San Francisco.
I’m glad to be back in warmer weather, but I am already looking forward to my next visit to the Bay Area and giving Erin another opportunity to host me. 
For my first trip, I think I accomplished all of my to-dos, but I know I won’t have trouble finding more things to see the second time around.