Resting Day and Legion of Honour

As today rainy weather was announced and in view of the Grand Fond Ride I will have on Saturday, I thought that after some 1400 km on the bike it would be a good idea to take a resting day.

After all the weather turned out not to be as bad, but still I decided that it was high time for some culture. The plan was to visit the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). On the way there I wanted also to stop at the Legion of Honour to have a look inside, now that I have passed a few times with the bike.

This has been an excellent choice indeed. 

Due to my ignorance I discovered that it held an absolutely wonderful classic art collection. Which starts with a very impressive collection of sculptures, mainly bronzes, from August Rodin. The “Thinker” is placed before the main entrance in the Aula as you can see on the picture above.        

The collection is not overwhelmingly vast as in the Louvre or the Hermitage, but is absolutely exquisite and will take you from the Sumerian, Egyptian and Greek classic artefacts to paintings from the early Renaissance, Baroque to modern impressionists like Monet and modernists like Picasso.      

  

There were only very few people and the rooms are very nicely fitted with furniture of the epoch the rooms are representing. So the ambience was very calm and left you much time to stroll around and lose yourself in the watching of the exhibits.     

So the "short stop" turned out to last till mid-afternoon and no time left for the SFMOMA. Well I am not too sad about that, as I am a bit of a “classicist”. I then parked my car at the Embarcadero and headed over the Telegraph hill to Chinatown for some (excellent) Chinese food. As I forgot the camera in the car I will spare you with any further pictures.   

The rest of my stay here now is completely programmed and there are some 450 km on the bike which still wait for me and it will start off with another Club ride tomorrow starting at 900 at Sebastopol, which means getting up early.