Wandering Wednesday - Fort Mason

Another WW from my stay in San Francisco, after my DH was done with his conference activities, we took the long way home and stopped off for a little walk about in Fort Mason. We parked right along the water in the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park.

 It was absolutely gorgeous out, clear and warm, hardly any wind, just perfect for walking right on the San Francisco Bay. This was a little mosaic piece which was on one of the old closed piers. It was so mysterious, I really wonder what (if anything) the symbol and colors mean??

As you near the top of the short hill, there's a great view where you can see the Golden Gate Bridge with the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture down below. This was formerly the U.S. Army embarkation docks and has been repurposed for civilian use like so many other military installations.

The trails are lovely and the park is well maintained. I really enjoyed this Madonna statue by Beniamino Bufano.

Really affecting artwork, we are really lucky that the whole city is filled with his works, the SF Chronicle did a video where they have photos of 58 of his public pieces.

We were surprised to find that there's a really lovely little place in the International Hostel at the top of the hill, Cafe Franco. Yes that's a view of the Golden Gate Bridge from their back porch. The coffee and sandwich that we ordered was great and very cheap. Just remember, you have to do your own dishes, it's the hostel-way. How fun would it be to stay in this hostel though?!

We checked out the big wide views from up on the hilltop. DH is there on the right doing his own panoramic photo.

All the blues, ahhhh.

Got a very good view of the old curving walking pier that's unfortunately too earthquake and ship crash damaged to be open for walking, and there's Alcatraz Island in the distance. Someday I'll go there!

and of course DH had to pose with the cannon battery. 

and then we walked back down the hill through the Black Point Historical Gardens. This is a community project where volunteers are removing invasive plants and re-planting the gardens with California natives and other plants. 

The lovely California state flower was well represented.

Even tucked into the stone walls.

It was hard to pick which direction to go, there were so many choices.

Some very fancy irises were blooming.

Here's one of my favorite natives that I keep meaning to plant at home, California Flannelbush or (Fremontodendron californicum).

 Isn't it beautiful? The ants sure seemed to love it.

It's a very steep hillside so the terracing and criss-crossing walkways were really welcoming instead of a long set of stairs straight down.

I have always wondered about this cute little round (and closed) building. I think it must have been a snack shack situation for the aquatic park area at some point.

What a zillion $ view, right from our car! Honestly, it was hard to leave.