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.
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.
Being 42 