We made an early start today, strolling down to Fisherman's Wharf to catch a fishing boat that during the day takes tourists out on sight-seeing tours of the San Francisco Bay. We sailed past the city waterfront districts, under the Golden Gate Bridge and around Alcatraz, the former Federal island prison that was once "home" to the likes of Al "Scarface" Capone.
San Francisco has preserved many hundreds of its tasteful Victorian-style terrace houses, the result being many beautiful city streetscapes. In the afternoon we visited a few of these, including one known as "postcard row" that has a great city backdrop.
Late in the afternoon we caught a bus to the south side of the Golden Gate Bridge and did what hundreds of others were doing; walk across it. This is the only way to truly appreciate the scale of the bridge and the engineering effort that must have gone into building it. The walk also provided many dramatic visual perspectives of the structure and surrounding bay. The two enormous cables from which the bridge hangs are each composed of 27,600 individual steel strands and each cable has a diameter of about 1 metre!
Sadly the Bridge has a darker side too, being the final jumping-off point for several people a year for whom life, even in San Francisco, has become too much to bear. Signs at several places along the bridge walkway display a telephone counselling help-line. But jumping off the Golden Gate was a long way from our to-do list, and shortly before sunset we caught the bus back to our motel to collect our luggage, then enjoy an excellent $8.99 buffet dinner at the nearby Star of India restaurant before heading on to the airport, our next jumping-off point.
San Francisco has preserved many hundreds of its tasteful Victorian-style terrace houses, the result being many beautiful city streetscapes. In the afternoon we visited a few of these, including one known as "postcard row" that has a great city backdrop.
Late in the afternoon we caught a bus to the south side of the Golden Gate Bridge and did what hundreds of others were doing; walk across it. This is the only way to truly appreciate the scale of the bridge and the engineering effort that must have gone into building it. The walk also provided many dramatic visual perspectives of the structure and surrounding bay. The two enormous cables from which the bridge hangs are each composed of 27,600 individual steel strands and each cable has a diameter of about 1 metre!
Sadly the Bridge has a darker side too, being the final jumping-off point for several people a year for whom life, even in San Francisco, has become too much to bear. Signs at several places along the bridge walkway display a telephone counselling help-line. But jumping off the Golden Gate was a long way from our to-do list, and shortly before sunset we caught the bus back to our motel to collect our luggage, then enjoy an excellent $8.99 buffet dinner at the nearby Star of India restaurant before heading on to the airport, our next jumping-off point.
