Visiting San Franciso

Oh wow! San Francisco is just beautiful and I've been lucky enough to come one of the weeks where there is little or no fog and just a little rain which came down last night. I wish hubby had come with me but maybe with a little luck he will come next trip.

The first day I went on a bus tour. Ever done those? I love taking Gray Line tours when I first get to a city. You hear about the history of the place and get an overview of the whole city. It's a neat way to find out where you might want to spend more time. The morning tour was an overview of the city. We went up to the Twin Peaks where we could see the whole of SF below.

We stopped at the Mission Dolores which was established in 1776. I walked through the church and the cemetary. The cemetary was quite surprising. It seemed that the average age of the people burried there was around 25.

Life must have been tough in those days. So many died so young!

We went around to Golden Gate Park, then saw the Presidio and went around the various neighborhoods. Real estate is really expensive in San Francisco and unlike other parts of the country, there hasn't been a downturn. The cost of homes has been going up steadily, mainly because of the lack of space left.

I'm told that even this house with its paintings is over half a million. I really enjoyed the tour of the city.

After being dropped off at Fisherman's Warf after the morning tour, I had a couple of hours to walk around there. There were lots of restaurants and a number of camera stores, galleries and the usual tourist memorabilia traps.

2pm saw me back on a bus and off to Muir Woods, a redwood forest just outside SF on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge, which I learned is painted in "International Orange".

After winding around the countryside we arrived at the Woods and were allowed one hour and fourty five minutes. I just loved the woods with the majestic redwoods.

I'll bet that most of you didn't know that it was within these woods that the United Nations was first created! I was pretty proud of myself. Not only did I walk around for a couple of hours at lunch time, I managed to do the one hour loop in the woods in the afternoon. For someone that had a total knee replacement, it was a very good day!

Needless to say, I had a great day and truly enjoyed seeing different parts of San Francisco.