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Climb half way to the stars
THE CITY ON THE BAY
In getting to know San Francisco Union Square is a good place
to start. It has palm trees, Macys department store, trolley cars,
open top tour buses, and of course the
Westin St. Francis Hotel.
A night there was part of my ‘fly
drive package’ and I appreciated the little touches like waking up
to find the sun glinting on the chandelier above my bed. Facilities
on offer include having your money laundered. It’s nothing to do
with crime, just a tradition kept up from the days when quarters and
dollar coins used to soil the ladies’ white gloves.
The service is still
available and it’s the only hotel in the world that washes all it’s
change. With clean coins jingling in my pocket. I stepped outside
and I hopped on to a clanging trolley car and was whisked off up the
hill the to where the balmy breezes blow.  The cable cars are the
only moving national historic landmark in America.and one of the
city’s free attractions is the San Francisco Cable Car Museum
where the cable winding machinery reels 11 miles of steel at a
steady nine and a half miles per hour.
The side streets looked
just too interesting and I had to get off and explore the districts.
Each was like a distinct village and I took time to sit and have a
coffee at a pavement cafe. Yes, I thought, I could live here, then
with already aching calves
I climbed the hills and
admired the brightly painted Victorian residences. Someone once said
that the ‘City on the Bay’ is so steep, that if you get tired of
walking, you can always lean against it. I began to believe it.
Eventually,  attracted by the sound of sea-lions honking and barking,
I came down towards Fisherman’s Wharf and ‘Pier 39’ where I
found ancient ships at the Hyde Street pier. Once it was a busy car
ferry terminal and one relic of these times remains. It’s The
Eureka the largest wooden vessel afloat. She is a paddle driven,
double ended, ferryboat that extended the reach of Highway 101. The
use of the pier as a public ferry terminal ended in 1938 fourteen
months after the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge Now the Maritime
Museum display a collecton of ships with The Golden Gate Bridge and
the prison island of Alcatraz Island as part of the backdrop.
In the middle of the
pier I found what looked like the wheel house of the puffer,
The Vital Spark, the
American equivalent of Para Handy popped his be-whiskered head out
and directed me to a ship that had long ago left the Clyde. It was
the giant square rigger that had been built at Scotstoun in 1886 by
Charles Connel and Co. She had regularly made the 14.000 mile trip
to reach ’Frisco. My ten hours or so spent flying out from the UK
were but ‘the blink of an eye’ when set against the six months
that the ‘Balaclutha’ would have taken, battling her way round
the treacherous waters of Cape Horn.
The museum is run by the
National Parks Service and at $2 entry, great value.
To get to it you ride
the Trolley car on Powell and Hyde and it’s facing you when you
get off.
Fisherman’s Wharf is
now largely a tourist attraction, and at Pier 41 you can take the
two hour Bay Cruise or the boat that takes you out to the
infamous prison island of Alcatraz. One thing is certain, you’ll
be glad it’s a return ticket. Back at the wharf, amid the fast
food stands and the trappings of tourism, a few fishing boats
remain.
If you want to catch
something of the original atmosphere, you have to get there early in
the morning. You’ll find it also in Jack’s Bar with it’s old
wooden panelling and 110 different kind of beers.
’Frisco has another
Scottish connection, it was a ‘super gardener’ called
John MacLaren who in the
early 1900’s, created the 1,017 acre Golden Gate Park.
He made sand dunes into
fertile soil by adding horse manure from downtown. It now includes
rose gardens, a rhododendron dell, a buffalo paddock and the tallest
artificial waterfall in the West. If you want to join in and have
fun with the locals you can rent bicycles, roller blades and even
horses.
The city makes a good
staring point for a fly drive holiday, Yosemite National Park, , is
only four hours away. To the North are Vineyards and giant redwood
trees and an hour and a half to the South, lies the powdery beaches
of the attractive ocean side towns of Carmel and Monterey.
The trouble is leaving
San Francisco. As Walter Konkite once said
"Leaving San
Francisco is like saying good-bye to an old Sweetheart. You want to
linger as long as possible."
FACT
FILE.
Brochure
- United Vacations, Tel: 0870 606 2222
Links:
Events
in San Francisco
A Gay view of
San Francisco from Drag Queen Sassy Stryker
Lonely
Planet San Francisco Web Page
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