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Photo: R. Krishnamurthy

Never a dull moment The city has a lot to offer to curious visitors

We first headed to the international airport in the car to enjoy leisurely its structural opulence, the magnificent technocracy embedded in the various floors for smooth flow of passengers and checking of baggages, restaurants and museum. It is the largest in the U.S. with a 2.5 million square foot international terminal. This terminal was opened in December 2000 and offers 24 wide-body aircraft gates. Air train, an intra-airport rail transit system links all the four terminals as well as the rental car centre. The BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) has a station which connects Silicon Valley and San Jose through the Caltrain network at the nearby Milbrae internodal station.

Dublin is well-connected to San Francisco city as well as its airport by road and rail. Our first visit to the city proper was by rail, and this system is called Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART). It starts from Dublin and goes to destinations beyond San Francisco. In fact, San Francisco and its surrounding counties are called Bay Area. The train, after West Oakland station passed through tunnel laid beneath the sea, and what a thrilling experience it was!

We alighted at Embarcadero station and got on to the pavement of Market Street through elevators. Our guide, my daughter-in-law, accompanied us up to Bay Street and left us at Ferry Tower with instruction to get inside the spacious hall of Ferry Tower and enjoy the scenic beauty of the bay and the two-tier San Francisco-Oakland Bay bridge and then to the 39th pier to see the sea lions. We had tea at the cafeteria and went round the area clicking pictures. We were surprised to see a statue of Mahatma Gandhi with a well-engraved tablet beneath it giving details, in the open area near the bay. We then moved on to see the 39th pier to witness the sea lions. We trekked a distance of about two miles on the neatly laid pavement running close to the piers. The tedium of walking in the hot sun was beguiled by the beautifully grown palm trees on the edges of Bay Street shedding lustre to the two-lane traffic on this road, with rail in the middle for the cable car to run. As we approached the 39th pier, we sighted the Coit Tower atop Telegraph Hill. This was built by philanthropist, Lillie Hitchcock Coit in memory of the fire-fighters who did yeoman service in the 1906 earthquake. Many believe it has been shaped like a fire nozzle! At the 39th pier a huge crowd had already gathered to witness the large number of sea lions jumping about in the embanked sea water and tempting shutter bugs to shoot their myriad moods.

At a distance we sighted the Alcatraz prison in the midst of the sea where prisoners used to be incarcerated. The booking for a cruise trip to Alcatraz Island and then to the famous Golden Gate bridge was already over, and we had to wait for a couple of hours to board the steamer. As my grand-children were too tired to walk in the hot sun, we skipped the trip as well as a peep into the nearby aquarium.

Incidentally, San Francisco is the birth place of poet Robert Frost, whose bust is there on the Market Street, and as I saw it, his famous lines “……miles to go and miles to go” quoted by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in his testament reverberated in my ears!

A word about San Francisco’s configuration. The city, having been built on 43 hills, is surrounded on three sides by the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay. The peninsula has an extent of 47 square miles (125 sq. km.) with a number of multi-storeyed buildings, old and new.

During my second visit to San Francisco, we forayed into the labyrinths of the city by car. Taking 101 highway from Dublin, we reached the sign-board of the famous Lombard Street — said to be the most crooked street in the world — and we took a turn at this point to the left and arrived at Marine Green to see the magnificent Palace of Arts and its lagoon built in 1915 in Greco-Roman style for the Panama Pacific International Exposition. It was designed by architect Bernard Maybeck. Then we drove to the most famous and magnificent Golden Gate bridge.

Opened in 1937, it connects San Francisco with Marin county. Its colour is called International orange, and it is astonishing to note that a crew of 35 painters work throughout the year to touch up the various parts of the bridge! It is the most photographed bridge in the world, and is visible from many high points in the city though often it is enveloped in fog. Before its construction, it was thought the bridge could not be built due to foggy weather, wind blowing at 60 miles per hour and the strong ocean currents sweeping through deep rugged canyon below. The 1.2 mile long bridge took four years for completion at a cost of $ 33 million , and eleven men lost their lives during the construction. The two great cables contain enough strands of steel to encircle the equator three times, and the concrete poured into its piers and anchorage would suffice to pave a five-foot wide side-walk from New York to San Francisco! The bridge-toll of $5 is collected for all vehicles entering from San Francisco. Both pedestrians and bicyclists can traverse the bridge in the path ways meant for them. The first exit on the Marin side of the bridge called the ‘vista point’ provides breathtaking view of the San Francisco skyline. Whatever be the time of one’s visit, one has to wear warm clothes and head-cover to protect against chilly weather prevailing all through the year.

Later we headed to City Hall and China Town. City Hall is a magnificent building and the Mayoral office is housed inside. After parking the vehicle near California Street, we walked to Grand Street to see China Town. The gateway to it bore the arch with Dragon-like structures on its pillars. The street is lined with boutiques, herb shops, restaurants, bistros and stores. Then there are the Japanese town, Yerba Buena gardens, Victorian houses west of Van Ness avenue and more to go round.

For visitors, the San Francisco Public Library offers free and informative walking tours of the city. About 200 volunteers work with the library to keep this programme going.

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