Off I go on my way home. I hope to be back one day — but that is true of many places. I guess there are several where I have visited for the last time in my life… and there is no way of telling which. Anyway, enough of that — check out the Bay Bridge in the foreground, Golden Gate behind, and Alcatraz to centre right. A very impressive city, and an enjoyable and interesting week.
Staffing the ‘welcome desk’ halfway through the last day of the conference is not the most exciting job in the world, I am sure.
Last day in California — it’s been an interesting and enjoyable week. Can I take the weather home, please?
More transportation, this time the bus back to the hotel after the conference dinner. There seems to be something amusing both Alexandra in the foreground and the gentleman behind, who happens to be Marc Prensky; those of you active in the education field may have heard of this guy (digital natives etc.).
Transferred this morning to the second stage of my California journey, the conference I am attending in Palo Alto. Could have picked a photo from there but there will be plenty of opportunities for that in the next two days, so here is a shot that lacks aesthetic qualities but does capture the rather bizarre train I caught this morning. A double-decker arrangement, but with an open trough down the centre of the upper deck, giving the impression of being sat up in a glorified luggage rack for the 45 minutes it took to travel from downtown SF into Silicon Valley.
As of tomorrow I’m working, but today still had time to do the tourist stuff. Alcatraz was definitely worth a visit, if only because I’ve never seen the inside of a prison before (honest) and one realises now how accurate all those movie sets can be. It was only a federal prison for just over 30 years, though — it’s been a tourist attraction longer than that.
Definitely don’t think I did San Francisco justice with yesterday’s shot — must have been the jet lag. This is much better. I apologise to the good people of the East Bay — Oakland and Berkeley — where I spent most of the day, but I have to go with this shot today. Could they have posed any better if they’d meant it? And love the cable cars too, one of those beautiful anachronisms that civic activism has preserved, and the world’s a better place for it.
So here I am for a week in San Francisco, surely one of the world’s best and most recognisable cities. This is one of its more neglected corners, a crumbling pier that stretches out into the Bay to the north of the city centre, with the Golden Gate Bridge behind it — one of its piers is visible in the background. As you can see, today I avoided the fog and chill for which the city is notorious. Plenty more to see yet, I hope.
This was just my transit airport, not my final destination. Bearing in mind where I have travelled to, going via Germany seemed rather bizarre, but ask my travel agent. Twenty years ago I once spent one of the worst and longest nights of my life trying to sleep in Munich airport (again, for reasons I can’t remember now), and I don’t like the city’s principal football team either (with apologies to their rivals 1860); so it’s not one of my favourite places. But today’s transfer was problem-free.
Another photo back at the alma mater, that is, Leeds University. I have a week away coming up though — not a new country, but a new part of it, and somewhere I find pretty cool, too. You’ll find out over the weekend — I have a 21.5 hour journey (door to door) tomorrow though.
Every year around this time there will be some new shoots on one south-facing window sill or other, getting ready for the moment when, like good parents, we decide they can be let out into the outside world. Usually, they survive.
Being 42 