Fog is synonymous with San Francisco.
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Not straying far from the ‘street where I live’ this time except for a drive through some of the areas of regeneration along the Bay with old friends, Bill and Brian. I don’t think I’ve ever been over the Bay Bridge to Oakland, and I still haven’t. But we drove out past the Embarcadero, under the Bay Bridge, passing the piers and the Baseball Stadium, and on through a rising Biotech Park for lunch.
We sat under umbrellas in an outdoor restaurant ‘The Ramp’ amongst rusted corrugated iron and weather-beaten boards. looking out over shipyards and huge Matson container vessels (not sleek like Mariposa and Monterey of the Australia – US passenger ship route in the Sixties),
For that lazy something to do, I jumped on board a cable car and sat outside taking in the length of California Street up to Van Ness. I can remember sending people to what was then a brand new Holiday Inn up there more than 40 years ago, (it still is a Holiday Inn). But on my very first visit to San Francisco was to inspect a brand new Holiday Inn Financial District, which we were to use for what grew to be thousands of Australian tour passengers invading the USA on the very first tour-basing fares. It is now a Hilton, and a sad one.
Then exploring in the close proximity to my hotel, San Francisco’s tallest skyscraper kept popping up until I walked up Columbus towards North Beach and all the Italian Restaurants with more people sitting, dining and imbibing in the brilliant sunshine. I’m burnt.
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