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The Golden Gate Bridge from Land’s End Park after a long walk across San Francisco

The goal is the South Pacific, but first we’re going to stop for a few days in Hawai’i. And if you were going from Michigan to Hawai’i and had a brother in San Francisco, wouldn’t you stop for a few days to break up the trip? Especially if you had something approaching unlimited time (ignoring for the moment existential thoughts about ultimate mortality)? I thought so.

We stayed downtown at the St. Francis, a classic San Francisco landmark, and spent our two days while Mark’s brother John and his wife Alma were working exploring a couple museums. Our first full day we were going to tour the Museum of Modern Art, recently reopened after a three-year renovation, and after confirming online that it opened at 10:00 AM we headed there after breakfast. To our dismay, the museum was closed on Wednesdays, starting that day, explaining why Google didn’t know it yet.

Mark & Ava outside John’s house

And Mark with Nico, just home from school. Nico is on the student council and wears a tie on Wednesdays when they meet.

Plan B, then, was to head out to the Legion of Honor, a European art museum built in honor of the fallen soldiers of World War I. It was a six-mile walk out there, pretty much across the entire city from east to west, all in new hiking shoes we’d both just bought. Perhaps not be the smartest thing we’ve ever done but it worked out alright. The walk itself wasn’t that interesting, taking us through kind of boring neighborhoods, but when we got close to the museum we were in beautiful Land’s End Park with great views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the entrance to the San Francisco Bay.

Another view from Land’s End

The museum was good, but the modern art museum the next day was spectacular. At $25 each it was the most expensive museum we’ve gone to but it was worth every penny. A huge collection all well presented in a way that you could really learn something about art over the last century. To top it off the museum has a free app available with absolutely great descriptions of probably a couple hundred highlights throughout the seven floors of exhibits. Each entry was interesting, informative, and – crucially – short, rarely exceeding two minutes. There were different people describing the art so it never got too routine. Simply the best museum we’ve been to in our multi-year travels. If you’re ever in San Francisco don’t miss it, even if you think modern art is kind of stupid.

Mark’s brother John. Sadly, we had no pictures of Alma even though she’s the best looking one of the lot!

And then we got to spend a little time with John & Alma. One night the four of us went to Al’s Place, what John describes as his new favorite restaurant. We could see why he thinks so highly of it; the food was amazing. Of course, we learned during the meal that it has a Michelin star, so it makes sense it would be somewhere on the “spectacular” spectrum. The next night Alma had an event at Ava’s school, so while she was being a good Mom we went with John, Ava, and Nico to a Wild Sushi, a great little place in their Sunset District neighborhood where we were the only English speakers in our section of the restaurant. That’s always a good sign.

That was the end of our quick trip through the U.S. mainland. From here it’s off to Honolulu for three days – again, largely just to break up the long trip – and then to American Samoa and the South Pacific. We’ve had it with all the ease of hanging out in the States; it’s time for some adventure!

Here we are at Land’s End

From here on out it’s all art, first from the Legion of Honor, where there was a big Rodin collection to start with.

Now it’s all about the art. This was a bust of Victor Hugo, one of Mark’s favorite authors, by Rodin.

It’s been fun to see art from the various places we’ve been. Here Monet does the entrance to the Grand Canal in Venice.

Now it’s art from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera came to San Francisco at one point, where she painted this self portrait. Rivera was a big guy, but notice the difference in the size of their feet!

Mondrian did this initially in 1935, when Paris was laying railroad tracks and stringing electric wires. Everything was all straight lines and all that, and in the original version there was no color, only the black lines on white. Then he moved to New York, learned to love jazz, and, in 1942 added the blue, red, and yellow boxes, “bringing in a little boogie-woogie,” as he put it.

And speaking of places we’ve been, this is Roy Lichtenstein’s take on Monet’s paintings of the Cathedral in Rouen

I don’t really know anything about this light installation except that I liked it

Ellsworth Kelly’s “Red Curves” from 1996. Just something about it…

More Ellsworth Kelly, this one titled “Blue Red”, also from 19966

And one last Ellsworth Kelly, who died just last year. Mark took this one, though, so I’m not sure what it’s called. Maybe “Mandoria”?