Yesterday Carrie & I took an urban hike through the stairway gardens of the Castro. (I love the Urban Explorations site - lots of fun walks with secret hidden San Francisco treats.)We started down at the Sanchez-Liberty loop instead of up by the Castro theatre, and finished our walk with a lovely lunch at Last Supper Club. Clicking on the tiny photos will pop larger ones. Enjoy!

We saw lots of crazy houses - this was one of our favorites. I loved the detailing on the door-windows; Carrie loved the cute Turkish details on the top.	We walked down Pemberton Street - a 3 block long street that is a stairway with pretty landings - including a water fountain for both doggies and their people.
We saw so many giant and gorgeous plants. Huge succulents, strange trees and vines, and this guy. I hope to someday have such a garden at my house.	I'm going to live up to Carrie's nickname for me on this walk - I'm a big meanie, so I won't tell you precisely which set of stairs was our very favorite. But I will tell you that this charming hobbittey door into someone's yard was only a tiny piece of the charm.
A view from the top of one of the staircases. The rains have left everything so lush this January. If the foliage and beginnings of cherry blossoms are any indication, we're going to have marvellous flowers this spring.	I loved all the crazy vertical stepped yards. This strange tree was growing out of a huge ball base that stuck out of a hillside yard. The tree itself grew straight up and over the sidewalk, almost to the height of the house above.
There's a tiny hilltop park up on Twin Peaks. You climb some old wooden stairs, and find a large flat park area with a gorgeous 360 view. Old eucalyptus trees smelled like home, and provided some much-welcom shade