San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has an excellent collection of art that is accompanied with an excellent museum store. The groundfloor showroom is huge and it contains all varieties of good sold in the typical museum store.
The art book collection is good and especially modern and contemporary artists and genres are well presented. Of course, the museum exhibition books are available. The counters near the entrance has a good selection of jewelry with quite inexpensive prices.
The other end of the store has a collection of modern classics in general design, kitchenware and furniture. There is a sizable collection of Finnish design items, too.
Children have their own section with all kinds of games and other activities. If you are bored with the airport toy selection, this is a good place to find something special to bring to your children.
Some of the items are available on their website.
www.sfmoma.org/museumstore, 151 Third Street, San Francisco, CA, USA, +1 415 357 4000
I’m back in Finland; feeling a bit worn, but otherwise ok. Our child decided to stay in, so there was no need to come back early from the States.
After the workdays in Emeryville, I spent the weekend in Lake Tahoe area with colleagues. The whole place is really, really nice. If you are ever travelling on that part of the world, consider paying a visit to the lake, too. Tremendous mountains and other majestic scenery. I’ll try to provide more detailed travelogue later.
I had some spare time on Sunday afternoon to visit San Francisco downtown briefly. I’ve been there for ten times or so, but never before used Muni metro — now I’ve one more experience richer. I visited several shops to find something for me, Sanna or the baby; nothing was really interesting. I ventured also to SFMoMA to visit the exhibitions and permanent galleries. The exhibitions weren’t that interesting, but the permanent galleries have several works that touch me. They are worth seeing every time.
After the “shopping spree”, I had a sushi dinner with a colleague and then he drove me to the airport. I love the hospitality people show me.
The flight was once again uneventful — this is a good sign, usually eventful flights are full of undesirable events. The plane wasn’t that crowded, and the lady sitting next to me decided to venture to another row — so I had the both seats to myself. I wasn’t that tired as last time, so I was able to sleep after half an hour of flying or so. I’m quite compact, but it was still a struggle to fit in the two seats in lying position and not cut off blood circulation to any limb.
I managed somehow to get a few hours of sleep and then read a book before we landed to Munich. I bought two big bars of dark Swiss chocolate (Lindt, really excellent) before continuing reading on the gate. The plane to Finland took off late and I was back home just before midnight. After travelling almost 20 hours, I was ready to hit the bed.
This morning I could wake up in normal hours. I usually suffer from heavy jetlag after trips to US and can’t get any sleep after 3 AM. Maybe the late flight is a good option for me — better to stick to it.
Neiman Marcus is a top-notch department store at the Union Square. The store caters especially for those of us that do not have to watch every penny.
The brands include names such as Burberry, Prada Sport, Yves Saint Laurent, Etro, Dolce & Gabbana and so forth. And this was only a small part of the fashion brands, the list continues with other areas of living, such as accessories or home. You probably got the picture…
The store has different events on regular basis, and sometimes you may be able to see one of the designers, too.
So, if you are a fashion aficionado with thick enough wallet, check this store out.
www.neimanmarcus.com, 150 Stockton Street, San Francisco, CA, USA, +1 415 362 3900
Taraval Okazu Ya is a smallish Japanese restaurant with even smaller sushi bar. There are two dining rooms, one facing the street and other on the back of the restaurant. The sushi bar sits roughly ten people and it is a good choice for watching the chefs making sushi.
The food is good and the price is decent. The sushi list is really extensive, there are both traditional Japanese sushi and then more eclectic portions available. You can also order custom rolls. There are also a whole range of other Japanese food available with inexpensive prices.
The service is fast, but we had to wait for some of the sushi for too long. The restaurant was not that crowded, but maybe some of the chefs are just slow.
Taraval Okazu Ya, 1735 Taraval Street, San Francisco, CA, USA, +1 415 759 6850
After working hard for two days, I got a couple of hours of own time and headed to check the shopping centers in Emeryville. For a city with only 7,000 inhabitants, Emeryville has abundance of shops. There are several bigger shopping areas quite near each other.
The best is Bay Street, an upper middle class shopping area featuring GAP, Banana Republic, Barnes & Noble and other similar type of stores. The area is nice and it resembles very much Valencia Row in San Jose, except that the shops are not so exclusive and expensive. There is a few restaurants and a cinema there, too. I visited several clothing stores, but didn’t find anything worth buying. Either I have enough clothes or I’m too tired to concentrate on shopping.
Then I popped into Ikea, just next to Bay Street area. It was a weird flashback from Finnish Ikea stores, as there was not much difference. Almost all furniture is available in Finland and vice versa. There were a limited number of items that I didn’t recognise, but maybe they are released in Finland in the near future. I considered eating Swedish meatballs, but I wasn’t that hungry and decided to have a frozen yogurt (soft ice) instead.
After Ikea, I walked to another shopping area, Powell Street Plaza. The shops here were more oriented towards discounts, so nothing to see for me. I tried to buy Pepsi from the grocery store, but failed. The store sold only organic or semi-organic stuff.
There is a couple other shopping areas, but one of them don’t have any brands that I would know and the other one is too far away. I decided to walk to hotel and scribble these notes before going to bed.
Urban Outfitters is a combination of Diesel and Crate & Barrel with an edge — if that clarifies anything. So, if you are looking for trendy clothes or some small items to your house, this place is worth of visit.
The target group for the shop is 20/30-something, so do not expect to find any easy garments there. Remember also not to push the limits too far, as you end up looking ridiculous. Style is a fine line with these garments.
www.urbanoutfitters.com, 80 Powell Street, San Francisco, CA, USA, +1 415 989 1515
Virgin Megastore is a meccah for music lovers, film freaks and people interested in fan stuff. All three floors of the store are filled with various items for killing time.
The ground floor has most of the music collection, mostly mainstream with some more peculiar groups here and there. The second floor has classics collections. Movies and games are spread on the upper floors, too. There is a small collection of books at one corner of the third floor. It used to be better a few years back and now you are better off in Borders on Union Square.
The third floor hosts a smallish café that has nice views to Market Street.
www.virginmegamagazine.com, 2 Stockton Street, San Francisco, CA, USA, +1 415 397 4525
I’m once again writing a travelogue early in the morning in a shady Californian hotel room, jetlagged and drowsy. Fortunately, I was able to get a full night’s sleep waking up only once (at two :).
Check-in and security check were hassle-free, as usual in Helsinki. Maybe other airports should check how things are done here in the north. Helsinki-Vantaa airport has been again selected as the best airport in the world in it’s class (based on the size) and the second best in the Europe on all classes. The prize is based on the customer satisfaction survey.
I spent a few minutes shopping, found one book about art and kitcsh and something to nibble on the plane. The rest of the time was spent in the Internet — full wlan coverage on the whole airport is a nice thing indeed.
The flying itself was okay. Either I’m getting used to the airline’s bad service or they are improving it little by little. The first leg was easy, as it takes only two and half hours from Helsinki to Frankfurt and the plane was only half-full (I’m optimist, you see — the internal engineer in me would say that the plane was twice too big).
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