USA Trip: San Francisco, CA

San Francisco.

Where I started and ended my trip.

Where I left my heart at.

Where I love the most out of all the places I visited.

San Francisco is beautiful.

I’ll let the pictures do the talking. (PS: I just posted 100 pictures on Facebook, check it out there.)

The Seven Painted Ladies – often seen on postcards, these painted houses are famous. In fact, these are not the only painted houses in San Francisco. Painted houses are everywhere, just that these 7, in a row, are famous.

Lombard Street – also another famous site. It’s a very crooked street, originally designed to facilitate horses going up and down the steep slope.

The Golden Gate bridge, overseeing the Golden Gate Bay. The field you see is known as Crissy Fields.

Not many has seen the underbelly of the Golden Gate. I have.

The bay waters at Crissy Fields.

The Golden Gate Bridge from another site, up in the hills. Talking about hills, San Francisco is built upon 47 (thereabout) hills. Explains the slopes!  Talking about slopes, here’s an example. A slope near Nob Hill:

So steep parking is an issue:

You’ve got to park at 90 degrees or your cars will roll down the hills, no kidding.

Chinatown

Chinatown. One of the earliest Chinatowns in the US, and apparently houses the largest Chinese population outside Asia. It’s filled with the usual touristy fare, though when you go into the small side alleys you can find authentic Chinese shops for real Chinese people. This is where I came for a rice fix one day. Fortunately (or not), the eatery I chose did not sell fortune cookies – something I insist is an invention of the West and refuse to eat.

In the middle of this collage you can see Sacramento street – this is the original 唐人街. I think it all started from here. I may be wrong, but it feels right to me.

The famous cable car turnaround at Union Square.  The queue is always long, so I didn’t ride on it. I did ride on plenty of streetcars though. The F line streetcar was my friend.

Pier39 is along Fisherman’s Wharf, and has a carnival thing going on. There is a sea lion habitat at this pier, and specialty stores. It’s a family place, and this is where I can find my favourite crab and shrimp chowder. I don’t eat clam, so clam chowders are out of the question.

From Pier39 you get a good view of Alcatraz, aka The Rock.

Castro

I watched the movie Milk, starring Sean Penn, on the flight to San Francisco. The movies is about Harvey Milk, supervisor of San Francisco and first gay man to help champion gay rights in the US. It was such a moving movie I nearly cried watching. It tells a tale of struggles against a mob rule masquerading as democracy, which really is still evident today. It tells of a tale of intolerance and religious fundamentalism. All in all it was a really thought-provoking film. After watching the film, I was sure I had to visit Castro, where it all began.

The  famous Castro Theater.

Raising the rainbow flag up high.

Harvey Milk Plaza. Is it just me or does Sean Penn really resemble Harvey Milk?

Castro, on a weekday afternoon, isn’t as happening as I would have liked it to be. I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting, but deserted streets wasn’t one of them.

Muir Woods

One highlight of my trip to San Francisco is the tour to Muir Woods, also commonly known as the Redwood forest. Californian redwood is the tallest species of trees in the world, and can easily grow to 200 ft tall. This particular species require the moisture from the bay area fog to grow well, and hence is found only near the coast to the Pacific Ocean. (Well, not near  near like coconut trees, but near enough.)

It was peaceful and serene in these woods. Frankly, I expected the trees to be a lot fatter considering how old they are, but they aren’t. The girth shown in the first picture is exceptional actually. Most of the other trees in the reserve are not as thick.

I love this shot.  Light and shadows.

On the guided tour to Muir Woods, we went up a hill to look at the ocean as well. The Pacific Ocean is awesome. I have never seen an ocean, and the view is simply breathtaking. The great expanse of water meeting the horizon, gulls flying above our heads, strong wind beating on our faces, but we all left with a smile.

Below is another ocean visit on another guided tour. That is an oceanside beach and the waters are cold; they hover at about 52 degrees Fahrenheit, about 11 degrees Celsius. So to take part in sea sports, a thermal wetsuit is a must. The waves aren’t as high as I expected, but definitely much more than the ripples we get in Singapore.

And the following two shots taken from the above two locations sums up my feeling about San Francisco very nicely – it’s like holding infinity in the palms of my hands. I never really knew where this line came from, until Angela told me it’s from William Blake.

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.” – William Blake

Despite not knowing exactly where the line came from, or what precedes it, somehow these pictures made me feel like saying those words. Maybe there is some truth to Blake’s words, to see a world in that manner. It is moments like this that resonate, to quote Suhui and her friend again, “life is perfect”. It’s like seeing eternity in a moment. It’s hard to convey what I felt when I was up on the cliff overlooking the ocean, you have to experience it for yourself.

I love San Francisco. Now I know why many in the world hold the same sentiment.