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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. 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.

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 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. At a distance we sighted the Alcatraz prison in the midst of the sea where prisoners used to be incarcerated. 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 before I sleep” 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.

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. 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 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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