City Guide: San Francisco

On my flight from Istanbul to Munich, a chinese business man was sitting next to me. After some time, he started talking to me, and boy, this was hard to understand at the beginning! But that reminded me of my time in San Francisco when I visited Chinatown. Even though it’s been a while since I was there, I decided to share my experiences.

This is the first thing I saw after getting in the city. My tour was dedicated to start in China town, so here’s the dragon gate, something like an entrance to it. You see at first glance that this is something popular for tourists, too, as you see little souvenir shops with postcards and magnets and so on.

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But these are the scenes which reminded me of my flight-experience: Chinese guys talking English to me in their very own dialect or pronunciation. Trying to offer me their products to buy, but anyways.

“Woah! Can you see it already?”

A group is always great at finding things. Admittedly, it was not too hard in this case as the Golden Gate Bridge really is something huge enough that you absolutely cannot overlook. Besides we were in one of those “World famous cable cars”.

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Even though we (my exchange group in the GAPP-program) could already see the popular bridge, it was not our destination for now. Instead, we were on the way to the famous “Pier 39”.

I was very astonished by what I discovered first. I got so excited and ran to one of my best friends, telling her: “Look! Look what I just saw! Honestly, you won’t believe it. Look, there are sea lions. SEA LIONS chilling and having a good day!” She laughed out loud and followed me, as she didn’t know what to think about my claim until she saw them with her own eyes.

Having finished being excited, we moved on. There are honestly many things you can discover! Sweet little shops offering everything you might need (or not), each of them has its own specialties. Here’s the chocolate shop for you.

If you ever have the chance to go there, have a look! You probably won’t believe what one can form out of chocolate, it looks incredible and almost not worth destroying the little masterpiece by eating it though. Anyways, there is another perfect place for a cappuccino: The Hard Rock Café.

In my opinion, it looks the same all over the world, is way too expensive and the atmosphere is not how I like it to be, but that’s my thought. I simply don’t understand what’s so special about it. Never mind, this time was the first time I saw one, so I went in. Oh, I forgot to mention something interesting: the Transamerica Pyramid.

You’ll find it when visiting China Town as a hint, but it’s easy to see as it’s really high.

Surprise on our way back

I obviously was damn tired by now, been awake for more than a day. I tried my best to get my sleep schedule fixed after the long haul flight from Germany. So finally the moment came when we got back into a cable car to get back to the hotel. I was dozing when I suddenly heard an excited voice almost shouting: “OMG! I can’t believe it! Look what’s outside!” Okay, it didn’t take long and I was totally fit again. For that reason, I saw my best mate jumping off the cable car. Honestly, he decided to get off and jumped just off! Everyone was just aghast. Anyways, most of us decided to follow him and just jumped off… never do this! You’ll definitely have trouble after it.

But here you see why we got off. Nobody wanted to waive Lombard Street, everyone wanted to walk down on the side and take photos. I was one of “everybody”, so here are some shots with my little digicam.

Next morning, new day, new highlight

Needless to say, all of us couldn’t wait seeing the Golden Gate Bridge and going for a walk on it. I still can’t find the right words to describe the atmosphere before we finally got there. More than just excitement, believe me! I still have to smile when I think of the moment when we got out of the bus. Literally, no one could hold us anymore, we ran towards and on the bridge…

Another fantastic view

A couple of these photos have been taken from the San Francisco national park. I really can recommend a visit if you’re interested in some nature as well, the views you have there are amazing plus you’ll get to know another side of the versatile city.

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