San Francisco - June 2011

We met our San Francisco tour guides here at the Ferry Building at Pier 1.  The building houses several restaurants where you can get your hands on anything from salted pig parts to greasy burgers.  It is the hub for all passenger port activities within the bay area, where you can catch a ferry to just about anywhere from Sausalito to San Jose. I compare this to the Metro in D.C.

Here's a picture of the ferry which we took to Sausalito. The ferry runs hourly from Sausalito to Pier 1.

Our first look at Alcatraz.  The island was first used as a prison by the U.S. army during the Civil War. In 1934, the federal government opened a maximum security prison.  Many of the nations most notorious criminals were incarcerated on the rock.

Here's Chuck, Gloria, Kathy having lunch at a local eatery.  I was there, I swear to you.  I had the greasy cheeseburger and fries!

You can see many homes are built on the hills to maximize the view of the bay.

Here's we are at Gabrielson Park waiting for our shuttle to arrive. 

The Golden Gate Bridge is one of the most photographed man-made structure in the world.  The paint color is the distinctive international orange. It opened in 1937.  A sidewalk lets pedestrians walk the 1.7 mile length of the bridge.  Many people do not know this but the U.S. Coast Guard has a station on the rear right side of the photo. They are only there to pick up the people's remains who jump off the bridge.

Think of it - just nine years after the devastating 1906 earthquake, San Francisco staged the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, celebrating the opening of the Panama Canal in August, 1914 and showing more than 18 million visitors from around the world that it remained "the city that knew how." Understandably, the universal reaction of fair-goers was "a sense of wonder."

This is the entrance to the Palace of Fine Arts which housed what the International Jury declared to be the best and most important collection of modern art that had been yet assembled in America. These buildings and surroundings were remolded and still stands in all of its beauty

Looking out the De Young Museum Observation Floor.  You can see the California Academy of Science on the other side of the music concourse.  These buildings are all park of the Golden Gate Park.  The Golden Gate Park is 20 percent bigger than New York's Central Park. It's about three miles long and one-half mile wide.

  The green area in the background near the Golden Gate Bridge is the Presidio.  As part of a military reduction program, Congress voted in 1989 to end the Presidio's status as an active military installation and on October 1, 1994, it was transferred to the National Park Service, ending 219 years of military use and beginning its next phase of mixed commercial and public use.

You can see the California Academy of Science on the other side of the music concourse.  The Living Roof´s 1.7 million native plants were specially chosen to flourish in Golden Gate Park´s climate. An open-air observation terrace enables visitors to get a close-up look at the roof's lush canopy of plants

The Music Concourse is an open-air plaza within the park. It is used as a venue for public gatherings centered around music performances. The focal point of the plaza, Spreckels Temple of Music, also called the "Bandshell", was built in 1899.  It was severely damaged in the 1906 and 1989 earthquakes, and has repeatedly undergone extensive renovation, and has served as a stage for numerous performers over the years including Luciano Pavarotti and the Greatful Dead.

On the inside wall you can see an expanded aerial view of the city of San Fransisco and its surroundings. It's extremely helpful for sighting buildings as you gaze the San Francisco Bay Area.

Welcome to the Japanese Tea Garden, the oldest public Japanese garden in the United States located inside Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, California. This complex of many paths, ponds and a tea house features native Japanese and Chinese plants

Lombard Street is best known for the one-way section in which the roadway has eight sharp turns that have earned the street the distinction of being the crookedest [most winding] street in the world. The switchback's design, first suggested by property owner Carl Henry and instituted in 1922, was born out of necessity in order to reduce the hill's natural 27% grade, which was too steep for most vehicles to climb. It is also a serious hazard to pedestrians, who are accustomed to a more reasonable sixteen-degree incline. The crooked section of the street, which is about 1/4 mile long, is reserved for one-way traffic traveling east (downhill) and is paved with red bricks. The speed limit in this section is 5 miles per hour.

Alamo Square consists of four blocks (in a square around a small park) at the top of a hill which overlooks much of downtown San Francisco. Along these four blocks are a number of distinctive mansions known as the 'Painted Ladies'. They have become a symbol of San Francisco's unique architecture and are often featured on postcards and promotional material for the city. 

San Francisco Chinatown is the largest Chinatown outside of Asia as well as the oldest Chinatown in North America. It is one of the top tourist attractions in San Francisco. As part of our tour, we walked  three blocks and looked into many of the street side shops.