We very much loved our apartment in SF. It was the first place we picked together, we made it ours, decorated it, made cheese in it, had parties in it. On the last day we were there, I wanted to capture a few details that made this apartment interesting.

Our bedroom door, which we closed only in presence of guests, had very cool textured glass. That made me think of France.

The pocket doors which we also used only when we had over-night visitors had these very neat little handles to pull them out with.

Our kitchen window looked out in the in-between-buildings corridor.

Our pantry door had some interesting features as well. It had a door within a door. The door chain attached to the big main door while the small door had a very wimpy lock…. ahem, super secure.

This is the very wimpy small door lock. It looks a lot mightier than it really was. I just loved that it was even there.

And we of course had awesome hard wood floors and bay windows. Very San Francisco.

Good times.

When I ride the cable car I feel as much of a tourist as any other foreign (to SF) passenger, which makes me want to take pictures. Recently I also got hooked on a nifty little iPhone app called ToonFX Paint. It pretty much cartoonifies any image you take and you can colorize it later.

You then get neat little effects like this…

View from the cable car, up California St.

I preferred to keep the images black and white.

Looking down California St. towards Financial District.

Cable Car wannabe’s (yep, they’re buses).

Looking out on Jones st.

What a fun ride home.

And then came the very un-poetic Facebook. I slowly reconnected with my old French friends. Incredible! My friends! From France! From tiny villages of Provence! One of which was Magali Escapin. She was traveling in Australia for a long while trying to escape from certain aspects of the French mentality (just like me). Long story short, she loved Australia so much that she wanted to take her MBA in Melbourne. To do that, she had to get out of the country and take the GMAT. Turns out the most convenient pace to do that was where? In San Francisco. Well gosh darn it, what a coincidence!

And there she was, on my door step, 15 years after we saw each-other last. What a trip! She stayed in the city for about 2 months, so we had time to catch up, have a few lunches… and take some photos…

So, Magali… how is it being here in SF?

Yep, we got our groove back on.

And yep, we still like each-other.

Oh oh oh and the BEST part is… remember that old little ballet photo? She was there too! On the very left!

And guess what? Here we are, more than 20 years after that photo was taken…

… not too bad, no?

Cirque du Soleil is in town, presenting their new show OVO, which we’re going to see tomorrow night. I’m so excited! This time, the show is about bugs. I love bugs! Especially when they’re not around me.

As part of their presence in SF, they made a little dance you could learn – The Bug Dance – and “perform” with a bunch of people and performers on Union Square. Those of you who know me… you might not be surprised… I had to go!

And so while I couldn’t take pictures or videos while I was dancing with incredibly light hearted people, I took some shots in between groovy bug moves.

I got to meet… uhh… a bug. She was making lots of weird noises but was very cool.

Some other bugs had crazy lashes! I mean, check out the lashes!

And then came the frogs. Oh dear… those frogs are COOL! I can’t wait to see them bounce around in their “natural” habitat.

Oh wait, this frog is hungry! Ahhh! I like you, but I don’t want to be your meal!

Pheww, I’m intact. What can I say… I felt like a kid and had a lot of fun!

1) They make a nice sidewalk and don’t paint the curb, which means you can park there for an unlimited amount of time.

2) They figure when the heck they’re going to clean the street and puts up a sign. So still able to park there anytime, except when they clean the street.

3) Put parking meter polls one morning.

4) Put the actual meter on the polls the afternoon.

5) Start charging.

Luckily, they didn’t give tickets to the motorcycles and cars that were parked on that block the day they planted the meters. But we’re not always lucky like that. The night before they put the street cleaning sign up, Justin decided to leave his scooter overnight. And guess what? The next morning, the street cleaning sign was up (unannounced), the street got cleaned that morning and a ticket was tucked into his scooter glove compartment.

Anyways, I will look back nostalgically at the times when I could just show up and park for free. Now I have to fit my little blue Vespa hiney in a specially designed motorcycle metered spot and pay $2.50/day. Ok, that’s not a lot, but it’s more than $0. Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise and it will motivate me to walk more often. Hmm.

Today, I had to bring in my Vespa LX150 to get a flat tire replaced. That meant dropping off the scooter at the shop and then busing back home. A few hours later, when it was done, I had to bus back down to the shop and scoot home.

Riding the bus made me remember a few things…
* Public transportation really saves on general gas consumption per person, especially when it’s natural gas (which I don’t think was the case today).
* Buses are dirty.
* Buses have a wide variety of human characters, including a woman who sat next to me and had old school headphones on, with techno music blasting through them. So far so good. She slided back the headphone off one ear and started talking. I was thinking hmm, she’s on the phone. But the music was still blasting and although I couldn’t understand what she was saying, she seemed to be repeating the same thing over and over again, with the same laugh at the end. So, after hearing the same foreign phrase about 10-20 times, I understood that nope, she wasn’t on the phone. Just had the same thing to say out loud over and over again and it seemed to be funny.
* It took me 10 minutes to walk to and from my 20 minute bus ride. The walk was nice but the whole trip took forever!!
* Buses smell. I actually hold my breath anytime I see an obviously very dirty person come my way.
* I don’t like riding the bus
* I love my Vespa.

And I’ll say it again: I love my Vespa! The trip home took me 8 awesome minutes instead of 30-40 minutes by bus. I have full control over my route, I feel the air, considering other vehicles I use a limited amount of gas, I feel in touch with the city and its streets, I am in an active mode and I can park it anywhere.

Seriously, once you have one, there’s not way to conceive getting around town without one.