I am a mochi machine! I woke up, took the bus up to Japantown, and went to the mochi shop Ron Chun recommended so highly: Benkyodo. The man who runs it is well-aged and a bit thin, with glasses and a kind, articulate way of speaking. “I hear you have the best mochi around. Which would you recommend?” I got two whole-bean-filled mochi, both pastel green, one dusted with soybean powder. They were like just-sweet pillows, melting in my mouth but with a satisfying chewiness. Pure heaven! I munched on them as I walked to Golden Gate Park for free day at de Young Art Museum.

De Young Museum is pretty ugly from the outside, like a rusty ship, but if you go to the top of the observation tower, you can see for miles — the emerald canopy of the park, the pastel adobe-like neighborhoods of the city, and the sky as it clears up from its morning bout of rain. King Tut was actually there, but the admission was exorbitant — furnishing his afterlife yet more lavishly — so I stuck with the colorful abstractions of Dale Chihuly’s glass and equally colorful abstractions of the much older (and perhaps less pretentious) Amish quilts.

From there I bussed to the Public Library to rest my feet and look up a ice cream shop that I’d heard had vegan waffle cones. It turned out to be all the way down Valencia and then some, a good hour-long hike, but with a lot of great stores along the way — FLAX art shop and Little Otsu stationary especially drew me in. Unexpectedly good weather, too, which has followed me around like Iggy’s over-eager pup, Lucy. At last, powered only by those two little mochi, I made it halfway across the city to Maggie Mudd’s ice creamery to enjoy a well-deserved late-afternoon cone filled with lemon-poppyseed and chocolate-cardamom goodness. Heaven again!

I hung out and read the Economist until Ron Chun and Iggy got off work, and Ron treated us to dinner at the South Indian restaurant, Dosa. We ordered the namesake rice-and-lentil pancakes with various fillings and various spicy dipping sauces, and ate our delicious fill. A welcome reprieve from the relatively heavy curries of the standard Punjabi fare. But the evening moved on, and Ron and I said our goodbyes and goodnights. Good night!