San Francisco, CA

For any of you who are "non-Californians", it might not be something that you are aware of, but most street names in San Francisco are named after individuals who played significant roles in California history, or individuals who played a role in American History. For example;

The above is just a small sample extract from a definitive list that can be read here. This is a Wikipedia Article that will give you the street names, the person the street was named for and a link to that person's background & history.

We stopped in Chinatown for some dim sum on our way to Coit Tower. You don’t get Chinese food like this in Sarasota. It made our mouths water. Candidly, we didn’t have a big meal but what we sampled was amazingly fresh and authentic. We’ve since looked them up and they get good reviews. Sometimes the best things are the things you stumble upon. It’s in our top five list of restaurants that we tried during our trip. Click here to go to their website.

You can see that we also got some images of Chinatown early in the morning and the streets were empty. We expect that COVID has had quite an impact on the crowd level. We were up early but not before what would have been rush hour prior to COVID.

Although New York City's Chinatown is larger, San Francisco's Chinatown is easily the second largest in the United States. It covers 24 city blocks and it's population is estimated to be 35,000. There are a number of historic buildings in Chinatown including Portsmouth Square where the United States flag was first raised in California. There are various "walking tours" you could try, but this is a very easy area to explore as a pedestrian with numerous restaurants, shops and other types of stores that you will perhaps find interesting.

Coit tower stands at 210 feet tall and offers stunning panoramic views of the city and the Bay Area. Visitors can reach the top of the tower via an elevator and then climb a narrow staircase to the observation deck, where they can enjoy breathtaking views of the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz Island, and the city's skyline.

The walk up to Coit Tower from the Chinatown area is steep! Once you get there you will be rewarded with fantastic panoramic views of San Francisco Bay and the City. This particular day was bright sunshine & no fog, so our views were unobstructed in any direction. The top of Coit Tower is a circular observation platform with large windows. We heard from the people that work there that the view is different every day and it never gets old.

The tower is also famous for its beautiful murals, which were painted by a group of artists during the Great Depression as part of the Public Works of Art Project. The murals depict scenes from San Francisco's history, including its maritime heritage and the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Much of San Francisco was rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake which allowed for large portions of the hilly terrain to be rebuilt. Victorian homes and fire-resistant brick buildings can be seen throughout San Francisco. A developer named Oliver Rousseau built homes that followed the European styles including Bavarian castles and Spanish Villas.

Today these fairy tale houses are dubbed "Rousseau" houses. We've added a few examples of some of the architecture that you will see in the city.

Fisherman's Wharf is usually one of the busiest areas in town. Due to COVID the crowds were very light and we walked around freely. We stopped for some sour dough bread and a coffee. As you would expect you can pick up all of your tourist gear here, grab some lunch and enjoy the views of the harbor and Sea Lions.

The Marine Mammal Center's biologists believe that the sea lions have chosen to haul out at Pier 39's K-Dock because there's plenty of food nearby in the bay and ocean, their natural predators (white sharks and orcas) do not typically feed in the bay and there is plenty of space.

The California sea lions are among the most vocal of all mammals, and the noise generated by this group is nearly constant and has been described as; barks, growls and grunts.

The floating wooden docks at Pier 39 offer a convenient resting place for sea lions, allowing them to haul out of the water and bask in the sun. The protected environment of the bay, with its calm waters and minimal predators, creates an ideal habitat for sea lions to thrive.

The famous Cable Cars are back in service, after having been closed to protect their employees from COVID. We discovered that the Pandemic not only reduced tourism in San Francisco, but it allowed us to actually get a seat on a cable car. In normal times during tourism season, getting a seat can be a very difficult thing due to the crowds who all want to ride the cable car.

This is the last manually operated cable car system in the United States - the first system started operation in 1878. This is also the only National Historical Monument that moves - at a constant 9.5 MPG.

NOTE: Tickets can be obtained at the MUNI Website, where you will be able to find ticket prices and other information. Our cost was $8.00 for a one way cable car ride

Click this image to watch a great video of our Cable Car ride. We had been in the Grace Cathedral area exploring, so we caught a Powell/Hyde cable car back to Market Street (downtown), got off and back on and rode it to Fisherman's Wharf. Fun way to see a lot of the city !

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The cable car ride dropped us off at the Powell-Hyde turn around area, and we decided to explore Fisherman's Wharf all the way up to the Fort Mason & Municipal Pier area to see if we could get some good images of the Golden Gate Bridge. Because the fog was not completely gone, we decided that we were not going to get good pictures of the bridge (from that direction) and that we would stop at the Fort Baker area on the north side of the bridge the next morning - and try for good pics there.

Ghirardelli square is only a short walk from Fisherman's Wharf. Originally a chocolate factory that moved to the current Ghirardelli Square in 1893 the square was the first successful reuse project and converted to a shopping center and restaurant center in the early 1960s after the chocolate factory was purchased by Golden Grain Macaroni Company and moved off-site. Buy yourself some chocolate here for the rest of your trip or grab some lunch and enjoy the views of the Golden Gate Bridge.

If you do have a car there is a parking garage for convenience.

We had not originally intended to stop at Ghirardelli Square, but the walk out onto the Municipal Pier had left us thirsty and ready for a break. Our thought was to get an iced coffee and relax for a while.

Alcatraz is just over a mile from the shore of San Francisco. The island was originally built for a lighthouse with a military fortification and federal prison. Some of the most famous inmates were Al Capone (AKA Scarface), George "Machine Gun" Kelly, and Robert Stroud (AKA the birdman of Alcatraz). There have been many movies made about Alcatraz: including the Escape from Alcatraz, Birdman of Alcatraz and the Rock to name a few. Alcatraz and the idea of escaping it is part of pop culture in America and the tour of the island and prison is worth the visit. There is an excellent audio tour that makes you feel like you are there with the prisoners. You can tour by day or by night, but you must have advance reservations. Click here to book ahead.

Alcatraz has had many "lives" since it was first discovered and named by Spanish Explorers in 1775; A "private island" in a Mexican land grant, during the civil war it was an Army Fort, in 1867 it became a Military Prison, in 1933 it became a Federal Prison reserved for dangerous prisoners and was closed in 1963. It was occupied by Native American Activists in 1964 and again in 1969. The 1969 occupation was over two years in length and some damage took place during that time. In 1976 it became a National Historic Landmark and it is now one of San Francisco's major tourist destinations.

An old friend of ours now lives in San Francisco, and we made arrangements to meet her at the Ferry Building where we planned to enjoy some wine and some charcuteries. The area around the Ferry Building provided some really nice views of the Bay and Treasure Island, as well as the Oakland Bay Bridge.

Some of the wine shops inside the Ferry Building (called "The Marketplace") were closed due to COVID, so we moved to a sidewalk wine shop that allowed customers as long as they wore masks. As you can see in these images, inside the Marketplace were a number of neat little shops - everything from wine, bread, chocolate shops, a Farmer's Market, donuts, exotic mushrooms & fungi and a range of eateries.