We were walking around Intramuros and came upon this bride waiting outside the church doors for her grand entrance.
If you visit the National Museum of the Philippines, beware that there probably won't be any toilet paper. However, you will find this painting.
From Seoul onwards to Manila.
And on to the provincia. No bike lanes needed here.
And back to the "Pearl of the Orient".
We had the good fortune of catching Deerhoof in Seoul. 'Twas a nice show and we had a nice chat with the guitarist and what appeared to be (but wasn't) a one-piece jumpsuit he was wearing.
We saw the Yayoi Kusama exhibition "A Dream I Dreamed" at the Seoul Arts Centre.
Both the art and crowd were a trip.
We went back to Korea for a week to see the old sights, eat our favourite things, bathe in nostalgia and note what has changed. It was a lovely time and of course I took some pictures.
And of course we did a little hiking (at Bukhansan).
And of course we made some fast friends who shared their hiking snacks of goguma and makgeolli, crammed into a taxi with us and took us out to a delicious post-hike lunch of spicy catfish stew.
And of course we gallivanted around Seoul and we were happy...
Colleen called me out to see a cicada molting. We'd certainly heard them before, seen their empty shells, and also live specimens occasion in Toronto and teeming in trees in Korea. The shells I've seen are brown and the live ones bluish black, so I was quite surprised to see this vibrant, green-orange-pink creature frozen in a backwards dive. It twitched slightly and vibrated in short bursts. The wings slowly unfurled, looking fresh, new surfaces catching air for the first time. We wondered whether it was aware of us, perhaps thinking, "Crap, I feel vulnerable."
Vulnerable, yes. But also amazing!
We rented bikes and rode them across the Golden Gate Bridge. A touristy thing? I'm glad we did. Halfway, we stopped to peer over the edge. I got that tingle in the feet brought on by heights or maybe by the thought of falling. A heavy fog rolling in and engulfing us, a close-up cloud stealing away with your body's heat. The unsettling roar, not of the ocean, but of the cars traversing. Looking out over the water and the vast space above it ready to take you in, carry you away. The bridge, indifferent sentinel, red pillars reaching to infinity.
As we continued biking, I looked up at the beautiful details on the bridge, to my eye very Art Deco or maybe Art Nouveau and I kept thinking of that scene in The Neverending Story where the protagonist must cross a gate and the Sphinxes slowly open their killer-beam eyes.
My cousin took us to Baker Beach where we caught our first glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge to the North. A beauty!
At the Southern end of the beach we found big rocks with barnacles and mussels (I could be wrong), a rather large starfish (my first in the wild, so hard to the touch!) and some brightly coloured algae (the tide was out).
The de Young Museum, a rather strange and ominous structure in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, was one of my favourite galleries in California. In fact, it may be one of my favourite art spaces, with great natural light and an intuitive layout. I didn't take any indoor I'm particularly happy with, but here's one of the sleek exterior.
I joined a docent-led tour. The group was so small (myself and an elderly, local couple) that I had a lots of opportunity to talk about the pieces with the knowledgeable docent. She even reversed the order of the tour, starting with the modern stuff because I prefer it!
No photos of the art either. Instead, here's a tasty lentil salad I had for lunch.
I visited California in March and the first thing that struck me is the plantlife. Below, a snapshot from the 'burbs of Palo Alto and another from Berkeley.
