San Francisco seems like an awesome city. I’m really loving the climate here so far… after being in Vegas with it’s 40° degrees plus, with barely 7% humidity – you know the lady at the nail salon was complaining about the humidity in Vegas! She said they normally have 0.5-1% humidity and the 7-10% was ‘killing her’! I shit you not, thats what she said. And I felt like I was being dry roasted in an oven, compared to the sauna heat we are used to!
Anyway, I digress. San Francisco has very pleasant highs of 22-23°, lows of 12-14° overnight, with light to moderate breezes, and blue skies after the fog lifts. I could certainly get used to this! And it is much welcome departure from the Las Vegas heat.
One thing we are finding is at a total premium here is parking. Parking at the hotel gave us a rude shock – not included with your room rate and that’ll be $40 a night (plus tax) thanks for coming! Parking attractions is non-existent and could leave you miles away from your intended destination or in queues half an hour long to make it into a car park. So being tourists, we took a tour and made that someone else’s problem.
With more tour buses per square foot than any other place I’ve ever been, the Fisherman’s Wharf area is where we started out… with a bus driver named Jimmy. Now Jimmy is African American and originally from Memphis, however, we were instructed not to hold that against him (lord knows why though) and he had a bad habit of referring to himself in the third person; starting sentences and not finishing them (with some sort of expectation that we knew what he was talking about); and an unfortunate tendency to refer to people or things as though you already knew who or what they were! Not ideal for a tour guide whose primary function is to impart information.
So we set off on an incomprehensible tour of San Francisco. I can’t tell you much of the history of the city because Jimmy seemed more intent on talking about movie stars and real estate and tourism revenues than the gold rushes and great fires and earthquakes. But, so be it.
We made our way out to a place called Muir Woods, which is a coastal redwood with huge trees up to 800 years old. The view on the drive out was pretty non-existent as the thick (and fast moving) fog was settled over the entire city. Came down a long and dangerous looking windy road, riddled with suicidal cyclists, in our bus to go check out the woods. This little patch of pristine forest was rescued due to the efforts of one John Muir and one President Theodore Roosevelt, who apparently had been the greatest conservationist president the US has ever seen. He was responsible for putting aside more land for conservation and national parks than any other president.
Muir Woods are beautiful. The trees are some of the tallest in the world and we had a very pleasant interpretive walk (yeah, that’s an American weirdness we’ve been discovering everywhere we go – if there is a visitors center or a nature walk or a lookout or anywhere really, that provides you with information plaques and signage… then, those are ‘interpretive’ visitors centers, nature walks and lookouts – no signage equals non interpretive, I imagine). Trees gorgeous and huge, forest was primarily inhabited by tourists so no little forest critters to be seen today. It’s only about 15miles out of downtown San Francisco though, so sitting on prime real estate next to areas where condos rent for $16,000 a month – so well done John Muir for saving the 550ha he did.
After that we went for a drive around the Bay to Sausalito. Sausalito reminded me a bit of Portmeiron in Wales, where someone, who was obviously stoned, decided to build a Mediterranean village about as far from the Mediterranean as they possibly could! So it is a quaint bayside town with some Italianate architecture and lots and lots of boutique shopping and art galleries. Saw some unique and unusual glasswork for sale, none of which was even remotely affordable, and even if if was, there’s no way it’d possibly get home safely. As well as some huge pieces made out of license plates which would be equally stupid to transport. 🙂 So my Visa was spared.
After that we went to check out the famous Golden Gate Bridge. Built during the Great Depression, it is 2.7km long and six lanes of traffic wide, and 67m high above the bay. It’s one of the worlds longest suspension bridges and possibly one of the most photographed bridges in the world. Also considered another ‘Wonder of the Modern World’ by American Engineering Associations. 🙂
Also saw lots of cool cliff housing, low lying terrace houses on reclaimed lands, the Palace of Arts, and other city landmarks that I can’t really say much about thanks to Jimmy’s lack of adequate communication skills! Got back down to Fisherman’s Wharf in time for a late lunch.
So far, I really like San Francisco. It’s the first place we’ve encountered in the US that I could imagine living in.