(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.

(1) By way of introduction: To name the things that have brought me joy...

It was probably early summer last year when I bought myself the first (and only) guidebook of the Gazeta Wyborcza "Dream Journeys" series, which accompanied the paper's Saturday issue - it was The National Parks of the American West and it only cost PLN 5,00. It never dawned on me then that it was the beginning of an adventure: I started reading the book immediately after coming home and did not stop until (well, a short break for sleep) late Sunday afternoon. It was then that a dream was born: to visit the American West, especially California - possibly go to San Francisco and then the national parks: Yosemite, Death Valley, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and, ideally, Mojave Desert.

The chances for my California dreaming come true were at that time, well, slim: given that my prospective traveling companion, who has at least a 50% vote in matters such as vacation plans, would not hear of a trip to the U.S. until they stopped the humiliating procedure of mercifully granting us visas, I could count on making my dream tour... in retirement.

And then the unexpected happens - In February and then in April 2008 HE HAS TO GO TO THE U.S., which he does, and he loves it, and he says we have to go there together, stay longer, see more.

Lucky me, lucky, lucky, lucky me.

Due to the scarcity of guidebooks about America on the local book market, I discovered the merits of Wikipedia in my preparations for the journey. Every time I went on Wikipedia, my appetite grew. I so hoped that this U.S. trip of mine was not happening too soon, because a dream that comes true that easily somehow loses its quality of a dream. And we want to "dream on" - like Gatsby;). A propos Gatsby - delaying the trip too much might have produced a disaster as well - the dream could have grown so huge that the reality would never possibly match it, as has often happened with those dreams of America;). I was surely at a loss...

As it turned out, timing was just right. I spent three weeks in August in San Francisco and its environs (well, we made 5,100 miles, which makes up 8 thousand kilometers or so), I traveled through 6 states: California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and Arizona (to be precise, I also set foot in Idaho and New Mexico - but that's only for the record). Here are MAP 1 and Map 2 of the journey (a little patience is needed for the maps to load, sorry).

The subsequent entries in this blog-memoir will contain pictures. There will be two types of pictures: very-nice ones, (marked (S)), taken by Simon, who traveled with me and M for some time, and not-so-very-nice-but-hopefully-nice-as-well ones taken by myself. Sometimes I will add a map or an illustration downloaded from Google's Images, but those will be obvious.

P.S. I'm writing this blog to name the things that have brought me joy - not my words, unfortunately;) But does it matter, if the sentiment is mine?