A weekend in San Francisco

Welcome, flower-haired reader, as I share with you our weekend in San Francisco. Last weekend was a long one here in the US, as it was the Labo(u)r Day holiday, the traditional end of Summer. We'd thought about taking the train down to Santa Barbara, but eventually found out this was something like an 8 hour trip, so decided to go somewhere a little closer to home.

Our visit took in a few of San Francisco's fantastic and in some cases, world famous museums. Our first stop was the iconic Museum of Modern Art, which I'd visited before some 16 years ago. Inside I found I remembered basically nothing! The galleries here are huge, and large-scale works are hung with plenty of space to walk around and appreciate them. As a minor nit, there was perhaps no specific standout piece that I absolutely loved, but nonetheless, I do like an art gallery so this was a lot of fun. There's also a huge amount here: in 3 or 4 hours we didn't see everything.

Our evening involved watching the baseball, as the Giants took on the LA Dodgers, who appear to be the two leading teams nationally at the moment. Unfortunately we couldn't get tickets to be there, but we could at least see the stadium from our hotel room.

Sunday was a real treat: the cable car museum!

This isn't just a museum: it's also the real live place from which the massive cables are wound to propel the cars:

This is the last working cable car system of its type anywhere in the world. It's obviously quite bizarre technology (these are cables which run for literally miles under the streets), and speeds are pretty limited, but you've got to say it's pretty environmentally friendly: everything here is electric, there's no pollution in the streets from the cars, and the cars are kept light as they don't need motors or transformers.

We finished off our trip with a walk through the streets to the Presidio - the old Spanish fort in San Francisco which became a US Army/Navy base, and is now mostly a park - then down to Crissy Field, which is a recreation and beach area next to the Bay. From there we had the fun of a bus ride back to the railway station, although this was curtailed when the bus driver chucked everyone off. I think the bus was late, and needed to turn back short, and after various hard-to-hear announcements, we heard the driver say, "I AIN'T GON' TELL YA AGEEEEN - IF YA STAY ON THE BUS YOU'RE GONNA BE HEADIN' THE WRONG WAY!".

San Francisco's a unique and interesting city, with an odd mix of things to recommend and obvious flaws. It's fun to be able to visit like this at short notice, but also to be able to go home again pretty easily. We've also got some time off booked in October, where we're thinking about a trip to Southern California, but we're yet to pin that down precisely. More adventures coming!