san francisco | Impressions

The next morning we drove through the Crookedest street, through the Russian Hill down to Fisherman’s Wharf and stopped at Ghirardelli Square. it was Sunday ant there were plenty of spaces available to park the car for it was not a late morning. Later those spaces disappeared. There were historic ships on that pier, the views were beautiful, no rain, lots of Chinese jewelers selling their creations for good prices by the cable car stop, what else can one wish for. Yes, and SF has skyscrapers, I guess built in special way so that they’d not be knocked by the first strong earthquake…

You can see Alcatraz in the distance. It is on an island, maybe that is why no one has escaped this prison, ever.

Golden Gate bridge from different locations:

After we passed Golden Gate bridge, which was quite an impressive drive, we came to Sausalito on the other side and had lunch in a nice restaurant sitting outside in front of thousands of “parked” yachts:

Then we drove winding roads towards the ocean again and here is what we saw:

And yes, I like plants. No matter how little time I have at the moment – I can’t go indifferently by them…

We reached San Francisco around lunch time and found ourselves directly in Golden Gate Park, the largest man made park in the world! It is 3 mi long and .5 mi wide and has plenty of parking places as well as big trees, ponds, lawns, flowers and also the de Young Museum, Japanese Tea Garden, the Botanical Gardens and The Conservatory of Flowers. They are all worth visiting. The Nature museum is being restored and is coming soon. It can be seen in the picture in front of de Young museum behind the big square. Here is the very modern de Young museum with its observation hall and the views from it:

On the right side looking from de Young there is the Japanese Tea Garden. It is small, old, very well taken care of and has several Japanese pagodas inside.They charge entrance fee. And while there you can also taste teas and participate in a tea ceremony.

The Botanical Gardens at Srybing Arboretum are like the extension of the park , except that they have little names under each tree. The trees are tall, beautiful, some are peculiar, never seen before. There are a lot of squirrels under one of them, they are making a show there while running around guests and asking for a treat. But only under one tree…There were not too many flowers in December. Actually, here is the only area we found densely blooming and this only purple flower smiling at us from high up in the green growth.

Then we drove to Downtown SF and after several rounds around Chinatown, for joy for joy! we found a parking spot on Vallejo st. by Grand ave. Here on the corner we found a cozy Thai restaurant to be really tasty! And we went around in Chinatown but it was getting dark. Here is the last view that day – taken from our parking space:

Tag: san francisco

San Francisco, day 2

San Francisco, day 1