As soon as we got back home from SoCal, we re-packed and headed out for a pre-planned, several day, anniversary stay in San Francisco. We stayed at a refurbished Marriott hotel, repurposed as a “Pulse” vacation spot near Fisherman’s Wharf. Weather was a bit cold and very wet (rain having finally started in earnest on the west coast.
We made sure to enjoy some wonderful dinners at restaurants that we know and enjoy. Just FYI, two of the places we most enjoyed were Fringale (south of Market on 4th Street) and Sutro’s, the fine dining restaurant at the historic Cliff House (north end of Ocean Beach where San Francisco meets the Pacific Ocean). We’re determined to grow our list of favorites in San Francisco during the coming year.
Given the fairly constant rain we didn’t get out as much (as planned) to sightsee or take photos. But we did drive out to the Sunset District (where I had lived as a teenager, many, many years ago) and sought out a small park I had never visited before. Called Grandview Park, it is located at the top of a hill (probably the furthest west of any of the many hills of The City). It begins with a unique stairway seen in this photo which leads to another street and an additional, less artistic stairway to the park itself.
While I was up there I did take a few photos of the various views (recommend clicking on any of these images to see them all larger). Viewed larger, the Sunset District image shows a small bump on the horizon (about 1/3 in from the left) which are the Farralon Islands about 30 miles away. The very large buildings in the center of the Richmond District photo are part of George Washing High School (my alma mater). The other images provide both a panoramic view of some of the downtown area and the bay beyond and a closer view of part of that (other sections of downtown are obscured by other hills to the east). The other photo includes the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge (painted not golden but a rust inhibiting, reddish color).
A couple of days after taking these pictures, and despite the on-and-off rain, we drove halfway across the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge to Yerba Buena Island and its man-made attachment, Treasure Island. We drove around parts of the island we could access (lots of new building development going on restricted parts of the island) and lucked out with the rain stopping temporarily while I managed to grab the cloud-covered San Francisco skyline shot, in between rain squalls, at the top of this post.
We had already checked out of our hotel and so we drove back across the San Francisco side of the bridge and continued driving down the peninsula to our home.
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