Blog Camp 1.1 with Bird Tweets and Relyn

Julochka, the Queen of Blog Camps, baptized our San Francisco adventure as “Blog Camp 1.1”

Here’s a quick executive overview of yesterday. Please forgive the hurried quality of the photos. No doubt, Robin and Relyn will do more thorough, literate and artful posts later, but I’m in a big hurry this morning.

I met Relyn “Thelma” of Come Sit by my Fire and Robin “Louise” of Bird Tweets in front of the magnificent San Franciso Conservatory of Flowers.

Then we popped over to the M. H. De Young Museum to visit some our favorite artists…

…and Oma’s favorite painting:

We tagged Baker Beach to say “hello” to my favorite bridge in the whole wide world:

We had dinner at Biscuits & Blues…

… to listen to torch singer Lavay Smith…

…and her Red Hot Skillet Lickers:

We ended the evening with a stroll around the Union Square area (opening photo), where we checked out the lobby of the St. Francis Hotel…

…and did some window shopping. Sadly, in this economy, most merchants are offering deep discounts. Marc Jacobs offered a 70% off sale with only a mild suggestion of consequences if you don’t partake:

All in all, it was a very good California day:

Thelma and Louise Come to San Francisco

They arrived! Relyn and Robin (AKA Thelma and Louise) came to San Francisco to visit tangobaby and me. They started on their road trip early this morning in Oregon and arrived around dinner time. It looks like they had a roaring good time:

I can’t wait to share this beautiful city with them!

Ironworks in the French Quarter of New Orleans

The elaborate use of ironwork permeates throughout the architecture within the French Quarter of New Orleans. Some of them were wrought one by one, requiring great skill and strength with a hammer:

…other iron features were cast into a mold allowing exact duplicates to be made:

…and still others are a combination of wrought iron and cast iron:

Most famously, ironwork is used in the railings for the balconies and galleries that are so prominent in the New Orleans architecture. Balconies project out and are extensions of an upper floor:

Galleries are supported by columns or posts reaching to the ground and therefore usually the width of the sidewalk.:

If you’ve ever been to New Orleans during a heat wave or been caught in a rainstorm there, I don’t have to tell you what a great benefit the galleries are.