City Tour

        Today is a hard day, at least it is so to my feet, lots and lots of walking.



        In order for my father to check himself in at the convention at Grand Hyatt at Union Square (there are at least two more of the Hyatt family in town), we decided to find our ways to downtown San Francisco at around 9 in the morning. Walking down Sutter street, it took about 40 minutes to reach the famous Union Square, with a very excitingly huge Levi’s building on the corner, the famous Macy’s and Neiman Marcus Department store across the plaza, and the St. Francis hotel right next to Victoria’s Secret. Tiffany & Co., Nine West, Niketown, and "Maiden Lane" surrounding the area, no wonder they call this the shopping plaza.



         San Francisco is a city that’s built on hills, it is said that it’s sometimes nicknamed: “the city of seven hills”, which is wrongly assumed as the title originally belongs to the Italian city of Rome. San Francisco has more than just seven hills, in fact, it has 43 high and low hills.



        Therefore walking in the city is quite a task, especially when you are a visitor and don’t exactly know the way you are going. It was very tiring to walk back to the hotel, but we have booked ourselves a city tour that would cover 5 hours in the afternoon.



         The city tour was guided by a Chinese guy who’s been living around the area for a long time. We started out heading down the famous Castro area, which is sometimes considered “Gay heaven”. Past the Castro area, we began to climb up the hill of “Twin Peaks”, which is one of the higher hills looking down upon the city and therefore a major photo shoot site for tourists. It’s also easier to make out the whole city from higher ground. 



        Market street cuts right through the city with the rainbow flag dangling in the wind at one end. The second stop was a quick tour through the Bay bridge, which went cracking down when the famous earthquake hit the city. It was opened one year prior to the Golden Bridge and has an artificial island in the middle to support the bridge’s weight. The island is currently still a military base and is only partly opened to the public.

         The next stop was past Fort Mason down to the landmark: Golden Bridge, that we past through to take a look at Sausalito, the nearby seaside city which is famous for the art galleries and boat houses. From there we returned to San Francisco city back to the Lombard street, the most crooked street on earth. We also had a look on the famous Coit Tower and ended the day with a bay cruise at Fisherman’s Wharf which went around Alkratrez.