2002 SAN FRANCISCO

Saturday 22nd June

Today was my day for wandering around. I walked down Market to 2nd and left down to Mission. The Palace Hotel was rather nice and I wandered in to take a picture.......... I walked for about six hours and came across many interesting places like the Rincon centre....an interesting building with many artefacts from the 1906 'quake. From there I moved on to the piers themselves .........Came across a statue of Mahatma Gandhi who was, apparently, very much admired. Came across a farmer's market and bought some delicious fruit.........I also scored a free lunch because they were closing up.
Next stop was Pier 39 where I treated myself to a big ice-cream and a CD which has some beautiful San Francisco pictures. I had a good wander around and just enjoyed the atmosphere.
Now the next trick, which turned out to be virtually impossible, was to walk home avoiding as many hills as possible. Don't know what the gradient is but the hills are pretty steep..... I sometimes had to turn around and go up the hill backwards. Near the top I came across the Cable Car Museum Spent about an hour there ....... you can see the actual cables that are still being used. What a good thing they fought to save the cable cars in the sixties. When I reached the top I found myself in Nob Hill with beautiful hotels, The Grace Cathedral and Huntington Park. The creme de la creme of hotels adorned the flat section.....hotels like The Freemont, The Huntington and The Intercontinental together with an all male private club spank bang in the middle.
Perhaps the most interesting building was the Grace Cathedral which has doors which emulate the Baptistry doors in Florence Italy. From the literature inside the church it purports to be the nearest thing to a non-denominational cathedral. In fact it was Episcoplian. I was pretty tired after my big day and all I wanted to do was get back to the hostel watch a little TV and fall into bed.















Sunday 23rd June

Big day today..... I took myself off on the BART or Bay Area Rapid Transit to go to Cathy's house. The train goes under the Bay! ! .... I tried not to think too much about that aspect.
We were off to Merced today for Cathy's father's 78th Birthday. Cathy has a big extended family and many of them were there. They made me feel so welcome and I enjoyed myself immensely. It is so nice getting to know the families of my friends. It was a good drive and I saw some interesting things such as the wind generators. I will be coming back to Merced on Wednesday to set out for Yosemite.

Monday 24th June

Cathy drove into San Francisco today and we did all the touristy things that are so much fun to do when you have someone to do them with. We walked over the Golden Gate Bridge even though we couldn't see it all properly because of the fog...... I have some pictures of what it would have looked like if we had been able to see it properly so enjoy them.
We drove over to Sausalito, had lunch and walked around then we went to the John Muir Redwood Park. Now that was lovely and cool temperature wise.
When we drove back over the bridge we visited the Japanese Tea Gardens in the Golden Gate Park. The pictures I have were taken from the CD I bought at Pier 39 and were obviously taken in springtime but they do give you a good idea of how beautiful the gardens are. We continued to drive around looking at all the different styles of architecture.




Tuesday 25th June

Today was a perfect day for our visit to Alcatraz .......but even though the sun was shining it didn't stop the atmosphere around the prison itself from being oppressive and we almost got blown away in the exercise yard. It has a fascinating history and I thoroughly enjoyed my visit.....something I have wanted to do since my quick visit 30 years ago. We walked around the wharf area when we came back and came across, completely by accident, a free lunch. The reason for this was a fire in March 2002 .......we even heard about it in Australia....... It was a lovely lunch!
Our next stop was the obligatory Trolley ride.......there was a long wait ......but there was some entertainment and interesting people in the queues to talk to.
There are some pictures of Cathy and myself that don't belong to any particular event. The lovely one of Cathy was taken in the Japanese Gardens. The sequoias were taken in the John Muir Redwood Park. The ones of me in a Japanese Kimono were taken by my Japanese roommate. She decided she wanted to dress me up in her kimono.....I did try to explain to her that we were very different sizes but she was determined. We ended up giggling our heads off like schoolgirls but it was OK because the two young girls who also shared the room were still out painting the town red.





The following pictures I took from a CD which had I purchased