I have been very remiss about blogging since I got home and I heartily apologize.
My only excuse is the ungodly hot temperatures I've been having to endure here...they really sap you of all energy for tasks physical and mental. All I've felt like doing after work is napping, showering (repeatedly), watching TV (I've started watching Dollhouse and re-watching Deep Space Nine, and we're almost through the first season of Deadwood) and listening to interviews on NPR and elsewhere with the Breaking Bad folks, in eager anticipation of tonight's opening of the final half season.
All very fine, pleasant, passive activities, that require less mental energy than finishing up my California saga. But I'm determined to take care of that today.
So, enough with excuses.
We had already decided that we wanted to spend most of that time in the Cable Car Museum. On our previous quick visit, a week ago, Joan and I had really enjoyed the San Francisco Railway Museum, a tiny jewel that just happened to be a block from our hotel. Where we learned the difference between cable cars, streetcars, and trolleys. (Please don't ask me what it is now, though!)
The knowledgeable and informative folks working there also told us about their larger, even more interesting sister museum, and we hoped we'd have time to see it.
(As it turned out, we could have spent even more time there, or perhaps somewhere else in this beautiful city, since our flight was—again—substantially delayed. Argggghhh!)
Of course everyone knows at least something about San Francisco's cable cars, if only from old commercials...
But it's something else again to learn about how this ingenious method of pulling people up and down the city's very steep hills actually works, and to see where the cables are actually pulled, around their gigantic pulleys...
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| Cable central |
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| cable slot out on the street |
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| car in action |
...not to mention to learn more about their fascinating history. It reminded me of the London Transport Museum, which was also really fascinating. You don't think too much about how you get around from point A to point B, do you? But it's always something of a little miracle and it always has an interesting history.
The Museum also has the benefit of being in a really lovely part of the city, Nob Hill, so when walking back to where we'd parked (yes! we found a parking place in downtown San Francisco!) we took a little time to admire the architecture of the neighborhood.
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| the Fairmont Hotel |
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| the Mark, minus its Top |
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| a handsome fountain in Huntington Park |
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| a pretty unidentified building |
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| railing outside another intriguing unidentified building |
Although both of these photos were taken on our way out of town, I couldn't close a post about San Francisco without some images of its most iconic structure.
Having something of a love/fear relationship with bridges, I'm always awed by their construction and appearance, especially when they're as gorgeous as this one.
I took something of a break from picture-taking while I was finishing up my time off in Colorado, but I did take some and we did bestir ourselves for a few activities, so I will try not to be so tardy in getting those posts up. But since school starts soon and work will be getting more hectic—plus the temperatures show no sign of cooling off...well, I'm getting my excuses out there in advance.
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