Dear followers, we want to apologize for the fact that we haven’t been able to give many updates the last weeks. We were really exhausted after NYC and San Francisco was our place of rest. However we now have a lot of stories to share so we decided to break them down in multiple posts! We’ll tell you about our flight to SF with some nice stewardesses and our time in the city, our experience at the world baseball classic semi-final in AT&T Park where we went to support the Dutch team. Our visit to Pier 39 and Alcatraz on the 50th year anniversary the prison got closed. We met up with the famous Bradley G. Munkowitz a.k.a. GMUNK and spoke of his personal vision on the motion business. We started our big road trip and visited Bethel in Redding for a couple of days before traveling south across The Big Sur on Highway 1 (Pacific Coast Highway) to Solvang and finally Las Vegas where we are staying right now!! That’s an intro you’ll never read ever again… but as you understand it’s a lot to tell in just one post, so we’ll just start at the beginning: San Francisco!
So we flew to San Francisco on March 15th and we had a big delay on JFK. We sat for 2 hours in the plane while it was still waiting at the gate for some repairs or something. After 1,5 hrs we were allowed to board off again so we could go get some snacks, Daan got some for us both and they were so kind to give us coupons to get free lunch at a store near the gate. Nevertheless the plane was ready for takeoff after 2 hrs and we could start the 6,5 hour flight.. so do the math: that’s 8,5 hours total sitting in a uncomfortable position! The flight got a lot more fun in the last hour, when a stewardess asked us what brought us to San Francisco. So we told her the whole story of our trip, our goal and our film “The Life-Light”. Super excited and inspired by the story she wanted to give us some snacks and drinks to take with us. In the end we got a really big bag with 8 luxury sandwiched that weren’t sold on the plane, some beers and soda’s, chips, popcorn and fresh baked cookies. A great gift which we really enjoyed after we checked-in at our hotel in SF (on Lombard st).
We decided to take it easy since we both were pretty exhausted after all the walking in NYC. We found out our hotel was pretty close to the famous zigzag road on Lombard St. So we decided to just go there and see what it’s all about. But we forgot that in San Francisco the roads are pretty steep, and the word “steep” is an understatement for what it actually was. Even cars had difficulty climbing “The Russian Hill”; so far for ‘taking it easy’ on the first day in SF. Nevertheless the view was amazing when we arrived at the top and we enjoyed it for a while before we realized that we had to climb all the way back down to our hotel. After that day I (Jordi) was pretty exhausted and didn’t had the energy to really go out and explore the city, so we stayed a lot in the hotel and I slept a lot. We did go to the Marina Bay area since it was nearby the hotel and it was St. Patricks Day.
We found out that the Dutch baseball team reached the semi-final of the World Baseball Classic and decided to go to the game since it was in the AT&T Park in San Francisco, the most awesome park in the USA (not that we have much to compare it to). It was really awesome to experience the vibe and the game. Daan bought an original NL baseball hat and we enjoyed the (not so exciting) game with a (not so good) beer and a (pretty bad) hot dog! The experience was great! haha! No really, it was so cool to experience the vibe and the park is amazing! The Dutchies lost the game in the end with a score of 1-4.
On our last day in SF we decided to check out Pier 39 and Alcatraz! We bought some tickets for the night tour at Alcatraz and spend most of our day at Pier 39. It was pretty cool to see, but not all that special. Maybe it’s just because the last weeks were so exciting that we’re just not that impressed anymore by normal ‘touristic’ attractions. We had some burgers and enjoyed the sun till 6PM when our boat would leave to Alcatraz. It was then when we found out it was a really special date to go to Alcatraz since it was exactly that day when it was 50 years ago the prison got closed. We found a good position on the boat and shot some amazing footage on the boat ride. The ambiance at Alcatraz was superb, especially because it was getting dark and a bit more “spooky” at the island. You could take an audio tour around the prison and I (Jordi) did that, Daan however just wanted to walk around the prison and take some pictures for himself. I really lost myself in the sound effects and story of the prison and escape attempts. It maybe looked pretty lame and touristic to see me walking with headphones through a prison,, but I think it’s fascinating and the place really came to live because of the sound effects. How disappointing Pier 39 felt for us, that’s how much we got blown away by the ambiance of Alcatraz! What a great experience and the view with the sunset, the golden gate bridge and the San Francisco Skyline… just wow! No words.. just pictures! (and footage of course!)
Last but not least we met up with the famous Bradley G. Munkowitz a.k.a. GMUNK in San Francisco! But more about that in our next post!
To be continued…
