We’ve spent the last 3 full days in Kyoto in a mix of sight-seeing and textile related activities including indigo dyeing, shibori dyeing, visiting a family-run indigo dyeing firm, and going to the vast flea-market at the Toji Temple. So much fun being back in Japan!

Off to Tokyo today and after a busy 3 days I’m a bit brain dead but here are some pictures :

It’s been both a relaxing and busy week here with Caroline and Dan: relaxing because we were finally in one place but busy helping in the lead-up to Thanksgiving. The first few days were dry, and unlike previous years that we’ve visited the vines on Pritchard Hill were nearly bare, and what was left of the colour was very dry – there had been no rain since April. Then, for the last few days there has been rain – soaking rain that has cleaned the air and is replenishing the vegetation.

Disappointingly there have been no posing squirrels this year, but I’ve seen a few new birds on the hill on walks. After the marathon of food preparation for Thanksgiving dinner, on the day after we visited Healdsburg, a pleasant town in Sonoma County, about an hour and a half away. The drive took us through areas burned in the fires here this year and were an illustration of how capricious fire can be – hills burned but houses at the foot of the hill untouched; trees along the road burned but not vineyards. It was also a reminder of how rugged it is here – the floor and the foothills of the valley are manicured and planted in vines, but behind them rise steep, scrubby and inaccessible hills where it would be basically impossible to stop a fire that gets away.

Caroline and Dan have again been generous in sharing their wine cellar, but we did two tastings this year: one in St Helena of Ladera Vineyard wines – sauvignon blanc, chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon – the most commonly made wines in Napa. In Healdsburg – while Sonoma is known for pinot we tried wines from Idlewild, a producer experimenting with italian varieties.

We fly back to NZ tonight, but here’s a little smattering of the Napa.

Now with Caroline and Dan in the Napa – having breakfast this morning and this little green hummingbird appeared outside the window – not the best shots but thrilled to get anything at all – the wings beat so fast!

We climbed the rise at the end of Hayes Street to Alamo Square Park: there’s a row of five old houses (dating broadly from the time of villas in NZ) that are referred to as The Painted Ladies and are “insta-famous” but all around the park are beautifully painted houses of the same era, and there are views back towards the centre of the city. Here’s what we saw!

We left New York on Tuesday morning for San Francisco where we’ve had a slightly slower and less structured time which has been welcome as we still have the remnants of the colds we got earlier in the trip. We’ve stayed in the same hotel before and after quite a few visits we know our way about, and have done all the higher-profile tourist activities.

So Wednesday we headed down the hill (we are in the Nob Hill area, across the road from Grace Cathedral) to North Beach for my regular visit to Libreria Pino, a little italian language bookshop where I added to the stash of books I’d acquired in Sicily.

As it was a stunning day and we were very close, we walked up Telegraph Hill to Coit Tower which has great views over the city and the bay. After lunch and an amble to the Ferry Building, we caught the cable car back up the hill to our hotel – conveniently the California Street line runs right past the front door.

Thursday we were off to Berkley for a food tour. Turned out it was just the two of us with the guide, Rebecca, who told us there was more eating than walking: she wasn’t wrong! Amongst other things we tried pastrami sandwiches from the local deli who prepare their own meat, pizza, fresh baked sour dough, soup, gelato….and the we waddled back to the metro stop to make space for dinner!

Today we headed to Hayes Valley, an area of interesting shops and restaurants we found last year. This time as well as a look around we found Alamo Square Park, which is surrounded by some fantastic examples of local villa-style houses beautifully painted.

It’s been nice to take things a little more slowly: no 6:15am alarms for early tours. We have a room facing a park which every morning is a hive of activity – dog walkers, tai chi practitioners, kids etc. It’s a nice diversion!

Here’s a few shots from our flight, North Beach and Coit Tower.

This tour (yes, another one!) was a real treat: an hour and a half in the Metropolitan Museum of Art before it opened to the public at 10am. There were five of us with a staffer who guided us around at a fair clip – it’s not a greatest hits tour: more a smattering of interesting things chosen by the guide that highlight the collections and get you around the different areas.

So we saw modern and traditional works in the Asian Galleries, arms and armour – including their current special exhibit about the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I called The Last Knight (which I found more interesting than I thought as our guide gave some really good explanations of the pieces themselves and their social context), some contemporary art pieces, but also Washington Crossing the Delaware (iconic, if not historically accurate), the Impressionist galleries, Rembrandt and Vermeer. And we saw sculpture being dusted and all those other things that happen before the public stampedes in.

After our tour we stayed on and wandered around in the near east and asian galleries for a bit before being arted out for the day!

Here’s a smattering:

Sheldon, our guide suggested if we did one observation deck it should be this one. Managed to time it for sunset, and by using my best All Black tactics managed to get a few good shots. It was madness up there but the views were great.

You can do this on your own – no question – but we booked a tour which marshalled us around a bit and helped with some context as well as efficiently getting around. Ben, our guide, is an actor (he’d even been in things we’d heard of) and brought some of that skill to the tour.

Ellis Island has a personal connection: my great grandparents on my mother’s side, and all of my grandmother’s siblings emigrated to the US around the time of WWI and all of them bar one (who entered the US via Quebec and crossing the Great Lakes to Chicago) passed through the Ellis Island migrant processing centre before settling in Boston. I can’t even begin to imagine what that migrant processing experience was like.

It was a fine day when we started out but really cold, so while the views were great, it wasn’t necessarily a day for hanging around – as you can see from our elegant attire!

After a long and torturous day of travel which began at 7:15am in London with an early morning tube journey across town from Embankment to Paddington, the fast train to Heathrow, the flight to New York and an extended transit through Newark airport as the automated immigration kiosks couldn’t read John’s finger prints and he got put in the problem queue, we finally made it to our hotel in midtown New York by about 6pm – or 11 pm London time.

The hotel is pleasant, in a great location near lots of things including the Empire State building, and luckily as we arrived shattered and in no mood to explore, it had a restaurant.

The next day we had booked a private tour to get a feel for a place neither of us had visited for over 30 years. We were with Sheldon and his driver Alex; and we certainly got to see more than we would ever have got to on our own, as well as hearing stories from Sheldon, a Brooklyn boy made good, the owner of the company we travelled with.

We started in midtown, but fitted in the Grand Central Station, the 9/11 memorial, Brooklyn Heights and the Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, and drive-bys of heaps of other interesting spots and got recommendations of spots to eat and see. Nothing like a bit of local knowledge.

Here’s some highlights:

Our second special interest day tour in London took in Paddington, King’s Cross and St Pancras railway stations – their development, history, architecture and place in the history of London. We found it interesting both from learning more about London but also seeing new areas where the regeneration of the stations has driven regeneration of the entire area – especially around King’s Cross where old railway buildings have been converted to house the Central St Martins art college and other developments reviving what was apparently a really scuzzy area.

Here’s a few highlights: