Some things in San Francisco that have seemed amazing to this ‘gal from Australia’...

Firstly our amazing old hotel with its old world charm, wooden panelling and an antique lift! (the sign warns us that it is an antique and no more than 4 people at a time!)

The building which is second on the right is the Hotel California

The amazing complex of piers on the waterfront; these structures appear to go on for ‘miles’! They are very old but many have received new leases of life after remodelling!

Some of the old pier buildings

The gorgeous, fat and indolent sea-lions that delight the crowds on Pier 39;  today though, some of the younger sea-lions started to play fight and push each other off the pontoon...much to the crowd’s amusement.

Another incident that took my breath away was the speed that an illegally parked car was removed...honestly it took about 30 seconds for the guy to back up, attach something to the offending car, hop back in his car and then...zoom he and the car were gone!

The hills!!! They are so steep and so long! One street has a ‘zig-zag’ affair that cars use to drive down the street.

This street had a series of curves to negotiate in a zig-zag fashion down the steep street. The curved route was edged with little clipped hedges

The old cable cars...they are hellishly uncomfortable if you aren’t lucky enough to get a seat but they handle those hills with ease and are so charming!

I love cats, but I also love dogs and the Californians love to take their dogs out and about with them! Even many of the homeless seem to have dogs and puppies with them.

This darling was down at Pier 39

Another thing in this lovely city that has made me smile are the tours that take people on segways rather than just walking. I saw a man commuting on one in the bicycle lane yesterday afternoon and boy was he building up speed! (A segway is described as a self balancing, two-wheeled, personal transporter)

Another delight in this city is the fact that there are lots of buildings which were built in the 1930-1950 still standing as well as more modern buildings. I find that very charming.

Both DH and I are fascinated by the bridges here in San Francisco. We’ve been across both the Bay Bridge (I think it may also be called the Oakland bridge) as well as the Golden gate Bridge, which is painted a colour known as International Orange, and the ‘golden gate’ refers to the Golden Gate Straits that it spans. They are very long bridges and the engineering is amazing!

Two of the bridges; top is Bay Bridge, lower is taken from the bus as we drove over the Golden Gate bridge

This is a photo of a banana slug. A little boy found one and showed us during our visit to Muir Wood! It was the biggest slug I'd ever seen.