Visited with a couple of people I met while travelling during the first week of this year. Stayed at my friend Obrie’s apartment 2 blocks from the harbour on the sheltered side of San Fran Bay. She was a great hostess taking me around to all the touristy things and making dinner! I also spent time with Adrian, Chris and Hassan who were in town from Sydney for the Macworld Conference.
SF is a beautiful city and I would recommend it to anyone considering travelling there. The feel of the city is very safe and relatively clean. I never felt nervous walking around after dark in the downtown area. Everything is relatively close together because the penninsula is 7.5 sq. miles. I managed to cover all the major tourist attractions by foot and took the subway/cablecars when my feet were tired. The only drawback was the visible homeless on the streets.
Fisherman’s Wharf (Pier 39) is very touristy with a lot of kitchy shops selling discount t-shirts or electronics but all the seafood vendors were neat to watch and I had the famous Clam Chowder in a bread bowl as well as som deep fried prawns. The drawback was all the HUGE seagulls that are so annoying. They followed me around and when I put my prawns down on the bench directly beside me touching my leg, I turned to eat my clam chowder, one of them came up behind me and snatched a prawn from my dish! EVIL!! I already have a hatred for California seagulls from ’92…
The Alcatraz tour was interesting. They had an audio tour about the prsion and the main structure but I didn’t see much information on the military base or the Native occupation. I did miss the intro video though as I was a little short on time so maybe they were covered during that intro video…
Bertha