Oakland Home

Yes! By our third day in the Bay Area, we found a spacious Oakland apartment that's reasonably priced and within 30 minutes of my job. The Resident Manager seemed to take pity on us and, maybe, even liked the fact I'd lived in her hometown of Lima. We moved in on Saturday and on Monday I was in the office!

Our first table/altar with plastic cutlery, wooden bowls and so tea cup plates for our lunch.

 Furnitureless for weeks!

And here I am! With a new shiny desk to facilitate the photo editing, and an apartment is starting to feel like home.

That's the end of this journey: visit my blog, http://alexandraslightbox.blogspot.com, or www.palography.com for future projects.

Day 16-17: Franciscan Hills and Prayers to St. Anthony

I love this mural; painted by Peter Collins.

Cute homes in the Sunset District. I also had some of the best dim sum of my life nearby.

The steepness of the hills took a while to get used to-- yeesh!

There it is!

Strolling through the Mission...

No luck on the apartment search today... so we strolled around Golden Gate Park a for a little while.

Heading back to the East Bay...

We were parked across from a park in Berkeley when I snapped this shot. We had been considering another rogue night in the car to keep expenses low, but the nearby park was full of a combination of drug-addicts and homeless lifestylers that you certainly never seen in New York. Not to belittle the strife of many homeless people in the Bay Area, but it seems like many young kids our age decide to life off the grid and in the parks. We ended up finding a last minute Air B&B in Oakland...

The next morning. Our wonderful hosts, Morganne & Cesar, made us feel at home and helped in our search, eventually narrowing our search down to the Oakland area. Their sweet son, Valentino, and the garden view were certainly highlights (whoops, no photos!)

Day 15: Hello, Bay Area

We passed through Santa Cruz and Los Gatos on the way up to San Francisco, but with the GPS stating only a couple of hours left in our journey, we didn't stop to look around.

Arriving in Oakland, home of some of the best signs.

And street art--

A few days before leaving on our trip we watched The Graduate at the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, NJ. If that doesn't make you want to drive a sleek, Alfa Romeo on the Pacific Coast Highway, I don't know what does.

We spent most of the day circling the East Bay scouring for apartments in this highly competitive, exorbitantly expensive real estate market. No luck today!

We spent a while parked here in front of a possible contender ($1500/mo studio apartment in Berkeley is considered a good deal). This cat eventually sat right where that metal cat stands, above the door.

Day 14: Pacific Coast Highway

Morning stroll and coffee in Venice...

Endless, excellent street art.

And some fabulous trees, too...

Here we are on the Pacific Coast Highway, heading North to San Francisco.

We walked down this path to the coastline because we heard sea lions. Turns out I'd scraped my legs through a bunch of poison oak... poor choices!

Proud to be lounging.

Foggy, winding roads of Big Sur.

There was no camping available throughout Big Sur, so we ended up crashing in Aptos.