Walking the San Francisco Hills

---

11 March 2010

Most people we had spoken to who had been to San Francisco had warned us that we could expect fog coming in from the Pacific. We were delighted therefore to wake up to a cloudless day. This was ideal for the walk suggested by the guidebook that we had planned to do which took us from our hotel by Union Square, through Chinatown and up pretty landscaped steps and parks to the top of Telegraph and Russian Hills from where we had magnificent views of the city, its bridges and San Francisco Bay. We knew that San Francisco is built on a series of hills but we didn’t realise how attractive this makes the city and just how steep and undulating many of the streets are.

We also fitted in some rides on the famous cable cars which were surprisingly ancient and crude to operate for the drivers. In the late afternoon we visited opulent City hall and the surrounding civic centre which was built after the 1906 earthquake.

All this made a great start to the trip.

---