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Published: April 27th 2009
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"The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled street so great..." This is how Jack Kerouac described San Francisco, and he's not the only one this city has made an impression on; nearly everyone we have spoken to has claimed that San Francisco is the best place to live in or visit in America. For a place with a relatively dense population, it still manages to maintain a quaint charm, projecting an image of itself as a small town, with its perfect 'candyfloss' Victorian houses, ridiculously clean streets, roses growing in every garden and up every trelissed wall, and a sense of community that has not been seen in England since the 1950s. For example, me and Mark were exploring the area and we stumbled upon a 'block party', where the street was filled with food stalls and entertainers. We got talking to a woman who introduced us to her family, and invited us to join the party and enjoy the free food, which we did - the first decent lunch we've had since leaving home! Everyone was so friendly that we could easily have been in a twee little village in the countryside.
But
San Francisco is still a city; multi-cultural, colourful and vibrant. A city of ludicrously steep hills, with street performers or bright murals on every corner. A city where the smallest, most mundane object or area can be transformed into something abstract and artistic; the garden in Alamo Square is one example, where old trainers and shoes have been recycled as flower pots. Or the narrow alleyway that has been dubbed 'Jack Kerouac Alley', in which the walls and floor are covered with poems and quotes (such as the one written above). It is a city of mysticism and hippy-sprituality, where you can't walk five minutes without passing the shop window of a palm-reader. It is a city that still strongly believes in peace, freedom and knowledge; a stained glass window in Grace Church, for example, pays homage to Albert Einstein, next to saints and other great figures of history, giving him a halo of atomic particles.
Basically, if you hadn't already gathered, I love this city.
On our first day we walked along the beach towards the Golden Gate Bridge. In isolation, I suppose it is quite an ugly structure, but when you add the bay and the
hills as backdrop, it just seems to fit. We walked along it and then back again, enjoying the views, before heading to the Palace of Fine Arts. This place, with what looks like a warm russet coloured Graeco-Roman temple perched majestically on the edge of a lake traversed by swans, is easily my favourite place in San Francisco. We just sat there for hours, basking in the sun and wondering how there could be somewhere so peaceful and beautiful in the middle of a city. Much the same is the Golden Gate Park, which we visited on another day, with its Conservatory of Flowers and Rose Garden. In fact, San Francisco is full of parks and gardens, probably because everyone here owns a dog which they seem to spend most of their time walking; seriously, there are more dogs in this city than children!
On another day, we drove out of the city, across the Golden Gate Bridge, to Muir Woods, where some of the coastal redwood trees grow. You will have to believe me when I say how huge these trees are, because they were just too big to take a full photograph of. Standing by one, with
its incredibly thick trunk that seems to stretch miles up into the sky, you are completely dwarfed. We walked for a few miles, climbing up high so that we could stop for lunch looking down onto the valley, and then we made the descent again, back into the cool shade of the trees. After spending so long travelling through deserts, we've really missed the colour green, so on this day we were determined to get our fill of it!
Another day, we went down to Pier 22 and caught a boat to Alcatraz. We had imagined it would be a desolate island of concrete, metal fences and harsh waves smashing against grey rocks, but we were pleasantly surprised. The cell blocks were, of course, disturbingly grim, but the rest of the island submits to the will of nature, which has led to some interesting contrasts; vines and flowers explode from a burnt out concrete building, the old prison recreation area has become a nesting ground for hundreds of seagulls, and peering through the thick foliage on the other side of the fences, you can catch glimpses of night herons and snowy egrets. Since the 1960s, the island has been
left uninhabited and thus nature triumphs once again, turning an old, ugly penitentiary into quite a pretty national park.
And so we have experienced San Francisco, and I admit that I'm really sad to be leaving. But tomorrow the road trip continues, and we leave the cities of the Californian coast behind, to explore the Great Outdoors!
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qudsia
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you have a natural way with words. you describe everything so well, i can almost picture it... wish i was there too (sigh)