2014 - April 23rd - Disney Museum, Golden Gate Bridge

Continuing our stay in San Francisco, on Wednesday we had a quick breakfast and then drove down to The Presidio to find The Walt Disney Family Museum. We arrived shortly after 10 AM and drove through the gorgeous grounds finding the museum close to the banks of the bay. We were fortunate enough to have been visiting while the special Mary Blair exhibit had a limited showing in the Diane Disney Miller Exhibition Hall. Mary is known for her artwork, bring those fabulous Disney colors that we have all envied from the animated studios, and her vision of It's A Small World pavilion for the New York World's Fair and eventual home at Disneyland. She left the Disney organization for about 10 years illustrating Golden Books for children and doing art for magazines and other publications. She worked on many Disney projects including the highly successful Mary Poppins. The exhibit was wonderful and we learned a great deal about Mary Blair from our visit. Hopefully some of the pictures with the explanations will come out in the photos well enough to read by any who look at this blog entry.
  
                                     
                


                            
                            
                        

             
                        
There are more pictures of the exhibit in the album attached ... the link to click on will be at the end of this blog section.

After spending about 90 minutes enjoying the Mary Blair Exhibit, we went to the to the front building to start our way through the Walt Disney Family Museum. We were here for about 2 1/2 hours taking in all that we could absorb. The story starts with Walt's birth and ends at his passing. It is narrated in signs by his daughter Diane Disney Miller. We have always heard of Walt and Roy but never researched and did not know that there were two older brothers and a younger sister making five siblings in all. Walt's Dad had a bet with his best friend that each would have a girl this time around as Elias really wanted a daughter. They bet each other that if they did not have a girl that they would name their new son after each other ... so that's why Walt was named Walter!

                 
All of the awards that were received by Walt Disney are displayed in the museum ... Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes, Grammys, and many more, foreign and domestic. Our favorite is the Special Academy Award Oscar for Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs ... great to see in person!


              
There is so much in this museum and we took quite a few pictures but not nearly everything. We'll post some of pictures and encourage everyone to click on the photo album link at the end of this blog post to open all of the pictures with the captions telling about each.
 
                                                
                                     
                      
                                      
              
                        


              
       

              
              
              
The end of the Walt Disney Family Museum is very touching as it tells the last month of Walt's life in detail and how the world wept upon his death ... including the characters that he had created.
              
              
              
              

              
Through the back hallway of the museum there is a window bank that overlooks the San Francisco Bay and Golden Gate Bridge. These are some of those views ...
                           
                        
We shopped around the gift shop and sat on the porch with something to drink for a relaxation period. We went in back of the museum to the bay and took a closer look at The Golden Gate. We didn't walk it this trip ... maybe next trip???
We wanted to experience the grandeur of The Presidio so we drove through a lot of the grounds, over to Sea Cliff, Lincoln Park and Lands End, and through a great portion of the 46 mile Golden Gate Park. We found a lovely restaurant for lunch with a fabulous window seat ocean view. We ended the afternoon with Ocean Beach and it's splendor.





For dinner, Mary Anne found a wonderful neighborhood seafood restaurant, Hyde Street Seafood, a little over 2 miles from our hotel. When in San Francisco, we highly recommend this restaurant to everyone! We decided to drive over (primarily to avoid the walk back after eating ... not to mention the inclines and declines of walking!). We had no problem finding it, but as most areas in San Francisco, it is a mixed area of a lot of residentials and some shops and/or restaurants. Needless to say parking is difficult to find as it's all on-street, no parking structures! We were almost ready to give up after circling the blocks in everyway I thought possible and decided on one last try on a direction I didn't believe we had gone. To our amazement and happiness we found one lonely parking space about four blocks from the restaurant. The food was so excellent that Mary Anne compared it the same quality that we had in Wales last year at our Bed and Breakfast. It was terrific!

Leaving dinner, we accidently passed what we thought was Lombard Street. We decided to make a U-turn and verify our suspicions. Yes, we were at the top of the one-way Lombard Street, the crookedest street in San Francisco! We surely couldn't pass up this opportunity to drive down the curvy Lombard Street. It was great timing, about 9 PM and no traffic, pedestrians, or tourist.
                
Please take some time to view all of the captioned pictures from this blog post that are in the album at this link ... just click here. There is more on previous posts, so be certain to come back and click on previous at the end of this entry. Hope you are enjoying sharing our memories.