San Francisco

Have had a very nice four days in San Francisco. I decided to fly in via SF, than LA, mainly because I hadn’t been there before, plus I also had a second cousin whom I had never met.

San Francisco is a small city, and with 750,000 population it is the second most dense US city after New York – with 17,000 residents per sq km. The larger Bay area has a bit over seven million residents.

My cousin took me around some of the tourist sights, including of course the famous Golden Gate Bridge. The bridge is almost three kms long.

Then had a look around Ocean Beach – very sandy and very large.

Also had a look around the Castro District. One could smell the drugs easily, in certain areas.

This is Union Square, which is where my hotel was. Not the nicest section of town, but very central, serviced by cable cars, and lots of cafes. The downside was the huge number of beggars – much worse than even DC. Some were quite aggressive, and there were two or three per block easily.

San Francisco has the highest percentage of Asian Americans of any city in the continental United States, yet walking around the proportion I noticed seemed no different to Wellington, and probably less than Auckland.

The city also of course has the highest gay population proportion in the US – thought to be around 20%. And that was more noticeable – there were a lot of same sex couples about.

This is the top section of Lombard Street, which is known for obvious reasons as the crookedest street in the world.

As well as being crooked at the top, it’s also pretty steep.

A rare Octagon house!

The statue is of Columbus, and the tower is the Coit Tower. One gets a good view of the city even at the bottom of the tower. We didn’t have time to queue to look from the top, so maybe next time.