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Published: September 21st 2009
San Francisco is too well known from all of you, so we won't go into too much detail.
It is a real city in the European understanding, a city where you can walk, take the bus or the tram and leave your car at home.
We stayed in a B&B in the Castro, the 'gay' neighbourhood where most of the action in the movie 'Milk' happens. As in other SF neighbourhoods, most of the old Victorian houses have been restored and it is really nice to walk around.
It is not possible to speak about SF without mentioning it's bay, the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz.
We arrived via Auckland so crossed the Bay Bridge which is slightly older than Golden Gate.
A cruise around the bay is an indispensable thing to do for any tourist, so we complied with that requirement and enjoyed it.
Alcatraz is still impressive but , to me lost some of its appeal.
We went to Fishermen's Wharf and Pier 39, a real tourist trap. Close to there we went to Buena Vista Cafe and enjoyed every minute of our lunch there. It is indeed from there that Irish Coffee, discovered by the owners in an
Bay Dridge
It links SF to Oakland and was opened for traffic on November 12, 1936, six months before the Golden Gate Bridge.obscure pub during a trip to Ireland was launched all over the US and then the world.
Needless to say they are specialists so tourists as well as locals come there to have an Irish Coffee. The barman himself is an experienced showman and uses his skills to the delight of all present.
Through our friend Martin in London, we met Donal Gofdfrey and had dinner with him outside SF. It was one of the highlights of our stay, great company and great conversation.
We also managed to see a play Good Boys and True at the New Conservatory Theater, it was a really great play.
The Japanese gardens in Golden Gate Park is certainly a must, the kind of place you can go again and again without getting bored.
So these are a few of the things we did and visited.
We also visited Mission Dolores, the birthplace of San Francisco. The Spanish arrived there in 1769 and built a church in 1776 dedicated to San Francisco de Asis. After this first church built in wood a new mission was built in 1791 and still exists today. We visited it and were like transposed in the past. It still
On Bay bridge
This bridge is double, there is a level down where cars run in the oposite direction. has a garden and a cemetery, it is very quiet and you forget you are in the middle of a modern 21st century city.
Before ending this post I need to mention our attendance of the 10 o'clock mass at the Catholic parish of the Most Holy Redeemer (MHR) in the Castro. It is important to understand that before WWII the Castro was an Irish catholic neighbourhood known as the MHR parish, with a catholic school run by nuns whose convent was across the street from the church.
Today the neighbourhood is mainly gay and the parish who was dying is now one of the few where gays are the majority and well integrated with the older straight parishioners. In his book Gays and Greys, Donal Grodfrey explains how this transition occurred.
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