Guest contributor: T
We ventured out of the hotel for breakfast, looking for a change, and some change out of $100 :(. they saw us coming though - our order of 4 orange juices turned out to be, literally, 4 pints of freshly squeezed juice, defeating even Bill. Slightly dodgy start to the day, with Bella spilling coffee on her not really coffee-coloured brand new cream-coloured jeans. It came out though - possibly simply shocked out by the naval-strength language.
Speaking of navies, we then took a tram to the ferry. The trams are rather marvellous; ours was a restored Milanese tram built in the 1920s, and still boasting its original notices: Vietato Sporgersi, and so forth (if I wrote a detective novel set in Italy - for which, disappointingly, I have no plans - that would be the name of the hero).
The Ferry building has been made over into a fab, manure-free farmers' market; at this point would be inserted a photo of the T-shirt from a splendid mushroom stall, bearing the slogan 'got shrooms', cunningly referencing back to Bill's drug escapades. However I have sadly to report that A's PC has been commandeered by Ukrainian organised crime, and is thus not allowing us to do stuff like uploading photos - it's too busy hacking into MasterCard and Santander and so forth; so for the time being, no photos.
We took the ferry to Sausalito, and very nice it was too to chug across the bay under a gentle sun. The route took us past Alcatraz, where I overhead the best putdown since Jack Nicholson in that old movie where he's a naval guard escorting a prisoner to jail - can't recall the title - he takes the crim kid into a bar for a drink, and the barkeep says he can't serve them, because the Shore Patrol might be along and he'll get into trouble. 'I am the goddam Shore Patrol' growls Jack. Well anyway: a man of about my age - in the prime of life - pushes to the rail at the stern to take a photo of Alcatraz, but then lingers for some time, after which the German family behind him, not unreasonably and in impeccable English, ask him to move, as he is standing right in front of them and blocking their view. To which he responds: 'my father did time there, all right? I'm just spending a minute remembering my father'. To which there was no immediate riposte.
Sausalito is charming and reminded us of various Mediterranean/Swiss resorts. It is famous for its brothels - sadly no longer with us - and its association with various writers, notably Jacks Kerouac and London. It also snubbed William Randolph Hearst, refusing him admission to the Yacht Club - a bit like the Garrick turning down Rupert Murdoch. Consequently he built Hearst Castle down the coast, instead of here as he originally intended, thereby depriving Sausalito of billions of tourist dollars over the decades - touché.
We went our various ways in the afternoon. My path took me to the Contemporary Jewish Museum - definitely a minority sport in the Brooks family - a dazzling building by Daniel Liebeskind. The featured exhibit was on the life of (San Francisco-born) Gertrude Stein. I have to report that she and Alice B Toklas were categorically not the only female pairing to be seen. Stein's father made a mint investing in the city's tram system, thereby allowing her to build her collection of Picassos and Matisses. A great deal of infrastructure and transport money in this country has been recycled into oil paintings, and I can think of worse things on which to spend it - wine and women being the traditional defaults ( though Gertie did lavish some of her cash on Alice, and apparently enjoyed a tipple, too).
The 3 younger Brookses spent the evening at Rise of the Planet of the Apes, starring Renaissance Man James Franco; a treat I felt able to eschew. And so to bed.
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| Farmers Market |
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| The Bees still thinking |
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| Day 17 - somewhat windswept |
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| Alcatraz from the ferry |
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