(4) Walking in SF's districts: Financial and Chinatown

In the center you can see the hotel in which I stayed during my week in San Francisco - the Westin, at 3rd and Market Street. Market Street is probably the most important street in SF, as it runs through the city from the Ferry Building to the south-western fringes of the city. It can be compared to Fifth Avenue or Champs-Elysees.
The hotel is located in the vicinity of the Financial District, and it offers beautiful views from your hotel room window, provided you are high enough (I was on the tenth floor and it was high enough).

(S) Here is another view of the hotel - the picture is taken from Yerba Buena Gardens. Yerba Buena was the name of the town when California belonged to Mexico and was not California yet but Alta California. Yerba Buena became San Francisco in 1847, when it was claimed by the U.S. Now Yerba Buena is an arts center and a nice recreation area.

And here another view from Yerba Buena Gardens - the Westin hotel is on the right (barely visible), it competes with the Hilton on the left. Amidst the huge hotel buildings you can spot a church - what a difference from European architecture, where a church or a cathedral building would dominate the landscape.

(S) San Francisco's Financial District is a forest of sky-scrapers where commercial offices are located. When you enter this forest, you feel quite surreal, with all the glass and metal reflecting the neighboring buildings. Even clouds are not real, as they are mere reflections of those in the sky. Here a most beautiful view on the Hobart Building - San Francisco's landmark. The building is situated at Market Street and Montgomery Street. It was completed in 1914 and with its 87 meters was the second tallest building in SF at the time. A standing ovation to its designer!!!

And here is another view of SF sky scrapers:

SF architects thoughtfully combine the old and the new: here is what may have been considered a sky scraper in the 19th century:

Another landmark among San Francisco's many symbols is the Transamerica Pyramid built in 1972. It does dominate the city's skyline with a 65-m tall spire on top of the 48th floor of the building. The best view of the Pyramid is from a distance (S):

The Financial District is best viewed from the sea, except that the fog can seriously spoil the spectacle. With the fog it seems that the buildings are so tall that they reach the sky.

It is hard to point to a center in an American city in the way centers are identifiable in European cities, but Union Square seems to be such a center in San Francisco: it is pedestrian friendly (you can sit down with a cup of coffee at a table in a sidewalk cafe or on the many wide steps), it is green, it offers space for street (and not only) painters and - most importantly - it is surrounded by big-name department stores, fashion outlets and luxury hotels.

Neighboring with the Financial District is San Francisco's Chinatown - a very distinctive ethnic neighborhood. Chinatown is not big (only 24 blocks) and it gives shelter to the largest Asian community outside Asia (around 75,000 people). Out of over 7 million Asians living in America, 35% live in California. No wonder SF Chinatown is quite crowded (S):Chinatown differs from the Financial District also because, with so many people crowding its sidewalks, it is not so neat after all. Chinese immigrants were forced into Chinatown in the late 1800s due to racist restrictions. It seems that every nation must find themselves a whipping boy, and Americans once blamed all their problems and failures on the Chinese (the crisis after the Gold Rush, the Great Depression), forgetting that it was mainly Chinese workers who were hard-working enough to persevere in the harsh conditions at the construction of the American railway, for example. (S)

Neat or not neat, the district adds color to the city as Chinatown architecture is very exotic (read: fascinating) to a European traveler;) (S)