(2) If you're going to San Francisco...

My first impression of San Francisco was a slight disappointment - cold and windy, nothing about the weather inviting you to sing along Scott McKenzie's song playing in your head: If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. What flowers? What hair? I would much rather wear a hat, and a warm one.

The bracing cool and strong winds are the effect of the city's location at the Pacific Ocean and the fact that it is a peninsula - surrounded by water from three sides. The city, which has a population of about 800 thousand, is connected with Marin County and the pastoral hills of Sausalito (I heard Robbie Williams has a house there, as do many other celebrities and millionaires) by the famous Golden Gate Bridge from the North and with Oakland, which was once a favorite site of the Black Panthers, and Berkeley with its University of California campus by the long Bay Bridge from the East. Together they form San Francisco Bay Area populated by just over 7 million people. The Bay Area is connected by a network of underground (and overground) railways called BART (The Bay Area Rapid Transit).

BART is practical and fast, but San Francisco is famous for its manually-operated cable car system (well, system is too big a word, since cable cars go along just two routes, and they are basically tourist routes). Tourists then squeeze in to get a ride - I did, too, and it only cost $5;)

Cable cars were introduced in the 1870s, and the promoter of this idea was Andrew S. Hallidie, who, as the story goes, witnessed an accident involving horses which hauled a streetcar up a very steep street. He could not stand watching the suffering of the animals and propagated the idea of the cable car.

Cable cars have been operating in the same manner since they were introduced: there is a driver inside (usually very funny, noisy and talkative to entertain tourists on board), who has to leave the car at its final stop and push it onto the circular platform and then turn this platform by pushing the car. In this way the car turns around

and then is pushed away from the platform back onto the railway. It is only then that tourists may get on board.

The cable car takes you for a ride along San Francisco's streets - here is a very typical SF street, calm and empty on a Sunday morning.

(S) San Francisco is however associated with very steep streets, since the city is situated on many hills.

(S) One of the most famous steep streets in SF is

Lombard Street.

(S) And here's a nice view from Lombard Street on the hilly city.

(S) One more look at another typical street to end S-F tour part 1.