Day trip to San Francisco: Art Deco paintings and robotaxi

Most of the trips I write about are plant-focused. Often I go by myself because my family would be bored to tears. Last weekend, however, the whole family went on an outing to San Francisco. If traffic cooperates, the drive from Davis takes about 90 minutes. But traffic and parking in San Francisco can be brutal, so we opted to take the ferry from Richmond:

Ferry terminal in Richmond

We left our car at the Richmond ferry terminal. There’s plenty of parking, and it’s free – as in $0. The ride across San Francisco Bay takes about 35 minutes and costs $4.70 one way. Compare that to $35+ for parking in San Francisco plus $8 toll to cross the Oakland Bay Bridge.

Route map © San Francisco Chronicle

To my delight, one of the first things I saw after exiting the ferry terminal in San Francisco was this mass planting of Agave ‘Blue Flame’ and Agave attenuata ‘Ray of Light’:

As we were walking over to the Ferry Building Marketplace for coffee, I spotted several wooden planters on wheels filled with leucadendrons and other cool plants:

These are so much nicer than the boring concrete planters filled with throwaway plants you normally find in public spaces

In addition to checking out several bookstores – fortunately San Francisco still has some – we visited the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park where I spotted more agaves:

The de Young has mass plantings of tree ferns in a small strip between two buildings:

The de Young is currently showing a retrospective of Tamara de Lempicka’s paintings and drawings, the first major exhibition of her work in the United States. Tamara de Lempicka (1894-1980) is best known for her stylized paintings of the rich and famous in 1920’s and 1930’s Paris which helped define Art Deco.

Portrait of Mrs. Bush and Young Woman in Green by Tamara de Lempicka

As much as I loved the Tamara de Lempicka exhibition, the real highlight of our trip was taking a Waymo robotaxi from the de Young to North Beach. I’d seen these driverless cars zipping about on other visits to San Francisco, but this was the first time I got to ride in one.

You use the Waymo mobile app to book your ride and, when the vehicle arrives, to unlock the doors.

Our car was an all-electric Jaguar I-PACE SUV – well-appointed and comfortable, but a bit crammed for four adults. Not that we cared too much. We were too focused on the experience, which was weird at first, then giddily exciting. It did take a little while to get used to the sight of an unoccupied driver seat, with the steering wheel turning all by itself.

Two displays, one in the front and one in the rear, show what’s going on in real time: the cars around you as well as the pedestrians walking on the sidewalk or crossing the street:

Here’s a short video I took at the beginning of our ride. It shows better than any photo what riding in a driverless car is like:

Finally, as we were waiting for the ferry back to Richmond, we enjoyed some pretty spectacular views of the Bay Bridge and downtown SF at dusk:

Now that I know how easy and convenient it is to take the ferry to downtown San Francisco, this will be my default mode of transportation as long as I’m not in a hurry or need to go a destination that is difficult to reach taking BART or Muni Metro light rail.

© Gerhard Bock, 2025. All rights reserved. To receive all new posts by email, please subscribe here.