Birthday excursions

Rich and I celebrated our birthday this year by heading into the City to see the Musee d'Orsay "Birth of Impressionism" exhibit at De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. The Orsay is circulating some of it's collection while it undergoes renovations. It wasn't a bad collection, and included several pieces that we hadn't seen when we were in Paris last year. When this show closes in September, it will be replaced with the post-impressionist exhibit "Van Gogh, Cezanne, Matisse and Beyond" which we hope to catch before the baby comes, although if necessary, maybe we'll go in the winter with baby.

We walked around the park some, then headed back downtown for tea at Samovar, where Rich had never been. They provides a ridiculously fancy overpriced tea service, but are also really good. We need to go back some time to sit on the patio, which was unfortunately not feasible due to the high winds and cold cold cold.

We finished the day with dinner at the Slanted Door in the Ferry Building. It was pleasant, although I'm losing the ability to sit still for a two-hour dinner.

We didn't take many pictures yesterday, but the ones we did were from the observation tower at the De Young. Mostly we observed fog (par for the course for this very cold cloudy summer we're having). The first picture shows the green roof at the Academy of Sciences.


And here's a 31 1/2 week belly shot of me overlooking the Richmond district.


All in all a lovely day. As it has been noted by myself and others, what a difference a year makes!!