If the title of this post isn't blatantly clear already, San Francisco Bay Area is a place I hold dear and close to my heart. I spent quite a number of years there - 7 to be exact. I visit at least once a year. The air smells fresher (unless you're in the downtown area), the fog creates a veil of mystery, and the temperature much gentler on the human spirit. On a recent visit to San Francisco, I crossed out a couple names on my list of places to visit.



High on my list was the Blue Bottle Coffee in Oakland. Can you believe I had been waiting 15 months for this place? I was introduced to Blue Bottle years ago, so the New Orleans or anything on their menu isn't new to me. I just have a slight obsession to charming interior decor and architecture.

Wow! I'm really bad at keeping up with this whole blogging business. I've been meaning to post for quite a while now, but I can't even come up with a good excuse on why the tardiness. Life, right?

At least this post will help me relive the end of summer when it was slightly more humid and the temperature nearing 100 degrees. I had went down to Washington DC for the weekend for one more fun summer activity before the leaves browned and the wind chilled.

The primary reason for my visit was really to catch The Beach installation at the National Building Museum. It was basically a trip down memory lane or an excuse for me to let the inner child out and play in a giant ball pit of vast whiteness. You can see by this picture I went to town with pretending to be the Loch Ness Monster.


 

Admittedly, I'm a huge foodie. I visit new restaurants all the time, trying new cuisines and soaking up restaurant ambiance. Here is a quick pictorial blog post about my food adventures lately.


Bulgogi quesadilla, yummy to the x power.

I'm just going to get this out of the way. Yes, I'm a self-professed amateur coffee geek. I like my coffee with milk, but not sugar. Coffee purists may look down on the milk bit.

Anyways, thought I'd do a quick post about the coffee shops I've visited lately in the Los Angeles vicinity. I'm back fairly frequently, but each time I'm back, I discover new coffee places. Here are five:

1. Bar Nine, a coffee shop that roasts the beans in-house. This industrial-looking cafe is tucked away in a small street in Culver City. It seems the people who work in the startups nearby are frequent visitors here.

 

After lunch, I headed to Salk Institute to take in the sea breeze and just stroll around the architectural wonderment that houses what I can imagine some secret, brilliant medical breakthrough about to happen.  That's right, this is the Salk Institute, the very institution envisioned by Jonas Salk himself, the one and only who developed the Polio Vaccine.

Jonas Salk enlisted the help of architect Louis Kahn to create an open laboratory space that is inspiring, open, durable, and maintenance-free.

Look at the symmetry of this baby! I can go on, but I'll let the picture speak my next thousand words.

The thing about New York is there are always temporary art installations placed all over. This summer, Jeppe Hein installed 18 interactive works in the Brooklyn Bridge Park. I love that they named them "Please Touch the Art." That resonates with me because as a museum junkie, I get stern warnings all the time whenever I step even a foot too close to the art work.

If you're in vicinity of the Brooklyn Bridge or in Dumbo at any point, go on over to the park and check out the fun, bright red benches. It was a quirky exercise, but I went on a bit of a scavenger hunt finding all the benches and making it a point to sit on all of them. My favorite is the one that looks like an upside down V. My arm was sore for three days climbing on top of that bench.

One of the installations is actually an interactive water fountain, which is perfect in the summer heat. I stood in the middle, cooling down from the spray of the water and snapping photos of the installation when this kid jumped in and out of my shots. The resulting pictures were kind of amusing, so I decided to share them. Look at how much fun he had.

Almost a year ago, an acquaintance of mine road tripped all over France and made a pit stop at this stretch of land lined with lavender. The photographic evidence of her adventure burned in my head, and I kept thinking back to that image of the purple field. That was when I did some research on nearby lavender fields in New York. It was towards the end of summer at that time, and lavender peak season just passed. So I waited patiently like a wide-eyed child waiting for dessert after dinner... for months... and finally, the season when lavenders come into bloom has arrived!

While it was raining in the city, the precipitation hasn't quite made it to Long Island just yet. I was able to enjoy the overcast sky and the gentle breeze, my favorite kind of weather.