Four days in San Francisco

Where do first time visitors with four days go in SF? Turns out mostly to places I hadn’t been to before even though I came to the city multiple times with my grandmother when I was a kid. I wish I could remember the house where she was born, the house where she grew up, the house where she got married — I think she pointed out all of those to me.

Let’s start with a famous bridge

and a less famous bridge.

That’s Bektaş and family, just off a flight from Turkey. Except for Seda who visited San Diego many years ago, it was their first time in the US.

We also found the famous curves of Lombard Street.

I had never heard of the houses called “Painted Ladies”. Maybe it’s an instagram sensation?

My Dad remembers feeding the ducks at the Palace of Fine Arts when he was a kid. What will Irmak remember in 80 years?

Unlike me, my Dad was able to find his grandparents’ house around the corner from the Palace of Fine Arts.

Grace Cathedral probably doesn’t make most people’s short list, but it was near our hotel, and Ferda and I quite enjoyed the time we spent in (also Gothic) Westminster Abbey a few weeks earlier. (If you’re unsure, skip Grace Cathedral.)

We used the rental car one day to go see the coastal redwoods in Muir Woods National Monument. These trees are the tallest living things on earth and can be up to 2000 years old.

That’s a Wow! Interesting to remember that on two previous road trips in California we saw the Giant Sequoias, the largest trees in the world by volume, and the bristlecone pines, the oldest living trees in the world. Are all those superlatives really correct?

I’m saving the best for last. My favorite time in San Francisco was the hour or so we spent at the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park. My Dad and I agreed — it’s as good as some of the gardens we visited together in Japan two years earlier.

Kind of makes one want to go back to Japan…