US here we come

Monday 19th we flew 4,000 kilometres from east to west across the North American continent and landed at San Francisco International Airport. The taxi ride from the airport to the Radisson Hotel on Fisherman’s Wharf was all it took to hook us to this charming and fascinating part of the US. Row after row of piers, a fog gently settling on the bay at dusk, and, above all, a magnificent bridge of the likes I’ve never seen before. We Australians think the Sydney harbour bridge is special but this 13.5 kilometre bridge spanning the bay of San Francisco made my heart skip a beat. I mistakenly assumed it was the famous Golden Gate Bridge but it was actually the ‘Bay Bridge’, built slightly earlier than the smaller (and, to me, less impressive) Golden Gate. The Bay Bridge is 160 meters above water level at its highest points, and takes 280,000 cars each day. From the distance, it seemed so fragile, so delicate, so beautiful.

We were in ‘Frisco (oops, not supposed to use that term!) for three full days. The weather was fine, warm, sunny, but windy at times and chilly at night and early morning.

The bay is busy with vessels, including large container ships. I noticed from the taxi that many of the wharf warehouses bore Chinese names and lettering. The Chinese community of San Francisco is significant and apparent in the many small businesses along the dock area or ‘Embarcadero’ as it is called (denoting also the more significant Spanish-speaking community, which accounts for about half the populaiton of the city/county).

I recall back in the early 1990s when former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating was promoting the notion of Australia as part of Asia how the then Opposition Leader, John Hewson, argued that the definition of Asia should be broadened to include the Pacific as well. In San Francisco, the people are reaping the benefits of a strong Asia-Pacific connection, the key link (I suspect) being the local population of Chinese background.

We were happy with our accommodation at the Radisson. It’s the biggest hotel we’ve stayed in, with 350 rooms. Very clean, modern, small rooms but we had a balcony that looked out onto the courtyard and swimming pool (heated to 82 degrees day and night). Beyond the courtyard, to the south-east, we could see the bay, the ferries, the boat harbour…

To be continued….

Barry

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Monday, May 26th, 2008 at 1:26 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.