San Francisco Part I: Guided Tour

One of the main things we wanted to do while staying in Pleasanton was to visit San Francisco. We're not fond of big cities and usually try to avoid them, but San Francisco has charming features like the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, and Victorian houses, so we didn't want to be this close and pass it up. We did, however, tour the surrounding area during the week and save the city for the weekend to try to avoid as much traffic as possible.

We usually like to start with a guided tour of a new city. We can get an overview, some history, and learn where things are located. Margery's online research turned up dozens of tours from quick one-hour tours to all-day tours. We chose a double-decker bus tour that provided hop-off, hop-on privileges so we could do a little exploring on our own on foot. One reason we chose the double-decker bus is so we could get a better view from higher up. Although we were happy with our tour, one thing to remember when scheduling a tour is a smaller mini-bus can sometimes get to locations a larger bus can't. The photo below shows one of the double-decker buses.



The tour company has a pick-up service if you're staying at a downtown hotel, but since we were obviously staying outside town, we could start our tour at any of the regular stops. We chose the stop in the heart of downtown at Union Square. Even though this is the high-priced shopping district, our online research showed the parking garage right under the square was fairly reasonably priced, at least on the weekend. A majority of parking (especially in the tourist areas) was $2 for 20 minutes, or $6 an hour (with a maximum of $30/day). We found a "bargain" at $21 for all day at the Union Square garage.

From Union Square, the bus headed toward the financial district where most of the tall buildings are located. One of the first things we saw after the bus departed was one of San Francisco's ubiquitous cable cars.

 

San Francisco is famous for its cable cars, and we saw quite a few while on our tour. Andrew Hallidie opened the first cable car line in 1873. Cable cars run on a system of cables that travel underground at a constant speed of 9 1/2 miles per hour. The gripman operates a lever that extends from the car down through a slot in the street to grab the cable and propel the car. Cable cars are very effective at navigating up and down the steep hills for which San Francisco is so famous.

After the 1906 earthquake destroyed cable car power houses and many cable cars themselves, most of the cable car lines were replaced with electric streetcars, which were a lot cheaper to build and operate. Cable cars were retained only on the steepest hills. Over the years as the climbing ability of buses improved, more and more cable cars were replaced. Incidentally, the transit buses in San Francisco are electric rather than diesel. That helps reduce pollution and smog in the city, but there were numerous times the maze of overhead wires intruded on our views from the upper deck of our tour bus.

Cable car service was almost discontinued several times, but the historical value of the cable cars was finally recognized, and there were efforts to save the cable cars. There have been several rebuilding projects, and there are three cable car lines still operating.

The most recognizable building in San Francisco is the Transamerica Pyramid located in the financial district. At 853 feet and 43 floors, it is the tallest skyscraper west of the Mississippi.



From the financial district, the bus went past Chinatown. We caught a glimpse of Chinatown Gate shown in the photo below. We later walked through part of Chinatown, and we'll have more about Chinatown in our next post.

From Chinatown, the bus swung east, then northwest along the waterfront. Many of the docks are no longer used for shipping because of the the advent of container shipping. Container shipping requires large, overhead cranes to unload the ships rather than smaller cranes and warehouses to sort and store cargo. Consequently, new docks were built elsewhere, and much of the old dock region has been converted to a tourist area.

There are, however, numerous ferries that use the docks. The ferries travel to various locations across the bay. One of the ferries, which is shown in the photo below, takes tours to Alcatraz. We'll have more about Alcatraz in a future post.

 

After the waterfront, the tour headed west through the city toward the Golden Gate Bridge. On the way, we passed the Palace of Fine Arts, which is shown in the next photo. The building was originally built for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition.

 

As we headed across the Golden Gate Bridge, we could see a little fog rolling over the tops of the towers. It was a little chilly and windy on the top deck of the bus, but at least the sun was out.

 

We were happy to have better weather around the San Francisco area instead of the cool, foggy, cloudy weather we had down around Morro Bay, Monterey, and Big Sur. It was still cool in San Francisco - the closer you get to the Pacific, the cooler it gets. It was in the upper 50s at the bridge and overlooks, mid-60s in the city, and 75 to 80 degrees in Pleasanton, San Jose, and Silicon Valley. It was sunny most of the time inland, but we could see fog in the mornings to the west. It usually cleared by mid-morning. We're especially grateful it was clear the day we took our city tour.

The next photo is the Golden Gate Bridge from the pull-off just past the northern end. It is a little different view than we got a couple of days earlier from the overlook high above on top of the hill to the right.

 

After a short stop for photos at the pull-off, the bus headed back across the bridge. Back in the city, the tour went through a neighborhood called Alamo Square. Painted Ladies is a name given to Victorian and Edwardian houses that are painted bright colors. There are several Painted Ladies in a row in Alamo Square that are quite well known and much-photographed. They are shown in the photo below with the city in the background.

 

San Francisco is well-known for its Victorian and Edwardian houses. As many as 48,000 were built between 1849 and about 1915. Many have been torn down, and many were destroyed by the 1906 earthquake or the three days of fires that followed. Although they were fairly inexpensive to build, they are very expensive to maintain. Many of the wooden exteriors were covered by stucco in recent years to reduce maintenance costs. The next photo shows more examples of Painted Ladies with the original wood exteriors.

Before returning to our starting point at Union Square, the tour passed City Hall. The present building was opened in 1915 and replaced one that was completely destroyed by the 1906 earthquake. City Hall is immense and covers 500,000 square feet and occupies two city blocks. The dome is the fifth largest in the world and is 14 inches taller than the one on the United States Capitol.

From City Hall is was a short distance back to Union Square where we started our guided bus tour. As we said, our bus tour had hop-off, hop-on privlidges, and we did take advantage of that. In the next post, we'll tell you about where we got off and about some of the things we saw while on foot.