San Francisco??

So, on Monday after a week of settling back home and starting to catch up on life and pens, I ask Sharon if she wants to do something, a day trip, and she says, “yeah, ever since we returned I want to go be a tourist in my favorite city, San Francisco.” So, I finish testing and shipping a few pens, and don’t get out the photo studio (it’s in a box and when deployed it lives on the dining room table—this is a small house) which is what I am supposed to be doing--images of new pens, ya know--and off we go.

Tourists in our own hometown, so to speak (we live in a suburb).

We spent the day on the Embarcadero, the old Port of San Francisco, so rich with the city's gold rush era history and now a tourist Mecca

From here you can see most of the city's skylines, and I use the plural advisedly, since there are more than one. Looking west here you get a sense of the mixed use of the city, highrise and low rise residences, churches.

The iconic Coit Tower, given to the city by Lily Hitchcock Coit, an early supporter of the fire brigades and the site of equally iconic WPA murals, recently restored.

The Transamerica "needle" once seen as an eyesore, is now an icon, representing SF's financial district. Once the City was regnant financially, now it is eclipsed by LA. Today, much of what is built downtown (and we have strict limitations) is directed to living or tourist or cultural space

Couldn't even think about tourism and San Francisco without the wharf, Fisherman's Wharf, which actually is still active

And crab is king, but not king crab, dungeness, the best crab in the universe

as these folks will attest, along with the clam chowder in bowls made from scooped out sourdough rounds

Opposite the wharf is a fave of Sharon's, the Musee Mechanique, a warehouse full of old novelties and games

My favorite, the Toothpick Fantasy, a boardwalk made of. . . you guessed it

And there's the Lone Sound Ranger, an enthusiastic one-man band tribute to Johhn Cash. He professed concern that my image would end up on YouTube and his mom realize that he is not "in college."

Alcatraz, the "rock." You've seen the film, right?

and the birds for which it is named. What's amazing as that 45 years ago they were all but extinct on the bay. Me, I like pelicans and Pelikans

We finished up the day at the Ferry Building Marketplace, home of Blue Bottle Coffee and other culinary luminaries. I forgot to get an image, here's a stolen one.