Weather: sunny with slight haze
I was up at 8.00 and following some breakfast left for the BART station with Mark. I decided to travel to Berkeley, on the eastern side of the bay to the north of Oakland. I had a slight difficulty in escaping from the Berkeley BART station in that I had to part with most of my remaining small change at the excess fare machine, having consumed all the credit on the $10.00 fare-card I had purchased the previous day.
From the station it was but a short walk onto the Berkeley campus of the University of California. The attractive campus originated with the foundation of a private college in 1873, and a handful of buildings remain from the early days. Heading past a rather magnificent life sciences laboratory I made my way to the most prominent landmark on the campus, the 94m Sather Tower, modelled on the tower of St Mark's in Venice. I was hoping to go up but had insufficient change to pay the $2.00 entrance fee, so headed off elsewhere in the hope that I would have sufficient change later.
I spent some time in the University Art Museum, housed in a slightly bizarre concrete building just to the south of the main campus. The museum housed a variety of paintings and other works of art, from Oriental antiquities to a sequence of photographs of life in the Western USA, plus a special exhibition on the religious artifacts of Tibet.
I had lunch at a small cafe nearby, evidently popular with students, before heading back onto the campus. I was somewhat surprised to see a row of vehicles belonging to the University Police, something not in evidence with the Proctors in Oxford, but apparently crime is a big problem on campus.
I returned to Sather Tower, now with sufficient change, and took the lift to the observation platform directly underneath the bells of the campanile. From here there was an excellent view across the campus to the bay, though it appeared somewhat hazy around the city.
Back at the BART, I travelled into San Francisco, this time leaving at the Civic Center station. From here it was a short walk across the United Nations plaza to the main square, dominated by the huge domed City Hall and surrounded by other civic buildings, such as the library, opera house and symphony hall.
I next took the BART down to the 16 Street Mission stop, and headed a few blocks west through a slightly run-down neighbourhood to the Mission Dolores. The mission was founded in 1776 as part of a series of 21 Franciscan missions founded along the coast of California by the Mexicans. The mission church was completed in 1791 and is the oldest building in San Francisco, though considerably restored and painted a gleaming white. Next door is a much larger basilica, built in 1918 to replace an earlier building destroyed in the 1906 earthquake.
After looking around the two churches, various memorabilia on display between the two and the adjoining graveyard, I headed back to the BART station and took it to the Montgomery Street stop in the heart of the financial district.
I stopped at a cafe for a drink and to write a couple of postcards, then decided to take a look at the Transamerica Pyramid. This 260m pyramidal tower, built in 1972 for an insurance company, has become one of the city's most prominent landmarks, and is likely to remain a prominent feature given subsequent restrictions on the construction of tall buildings within the city. In the base of the tower was a small exhibition relating to its construction, together with four video screens linked to remotely-operated cameras mounted near the peak of the tower.
Unfortunately the systems were not quite behaving on two of the cameras, but the other two gave moderately impressive views across the city through the steerable and zoomable controls. Public access to the top of the tower would have been preferred, but this was better than nothing. Alongside the building was a small shady park containing a number of giant redwood trees.
I returned via the BART from Embarcadero and then the bus, arriving back at Mark's flat at 7.35, considerably earlier than the previous night. Mark was home, having completed his telescope proposals, and we headed out to downtown Pleasanton for dinner.
I had garlic bread followed by risotto, washed down with a glass of local wine, made in the nearby town of Livermore (hopefully not at the national laboratory).
After dinner we returned to Mark's flat, where he entertained me with a couple of videos (Nick Park's The Wrong Trousers and a couple of episodes of Yes, Minister). I then did some packing ready for my departure the next morning and went to bed at 23.30.