San Francisco is a city of skyscrapers on the shores of the picturesque Gulf of California along which laden barges and elegant yachts sail. The main attraction of San Francisco is the Golden Gate Bridge connecting two parts of the city through the bay. The Golden Gate Bridge is the highest and longest support bridge in the world, built back in 1937.
San Francisco, harmoniously combining modernity and US history, is one of America’s most colorful cities.
San Francisco is the most detached American city in which happiness spreads through the streets, and the fun does not stop for an hour. Here is a brief chronicle of my trip to this amazing city.
Traveling to the other side of the planet was a little scary – a long flight, a time difference. Why can not teleport, avoiding customs formalities and sleepless nights on the plane? I recalled how I flew to New York — numb limbs, stiff back, tightness and annoying neighbor — I arrived half-dead. But, what is most surprising, this time I even liked it! I can’t say that sleeping in the folding chairs of WorldClass British Airways, specially designed for transatlantic flights, is better than in your own bed, but it feels quite comparable. Here we are in California! More precisely, at the San Francisco airport, where we are immediately warned that locals hate the abbreviated name of their hometown – Frisco.
You leave the airport, and the first thing you feel is the smell of eucalyptus oil, warm wind and something else indescribable … the ocean, probably. We drive to the city past the roadside fast foods and parking lots, motels and other American classics. Through the billboards there is a huge inscription on one of the hills: San Francisco -Industrial City. Are factories smoking here ?! Since the Gold Rush, industry in the wildest American state, California, has developed in San Francisco.
And now, skyscrapers run into clouds and slowly move along the bay heavy barges, sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge (Golden Gate Bridge) – the main attraction of San Francisco. It is thrown across the Gulf of California in the place where its blue waves mix with the cold dark water of the ocean. Three kilometers of iron structures painted with traditional American ocher is the longest and highest supporting bridge in the world. Immediately after the construction was completed in 1937, the bridge – the fruit of American constructivism – became famous throughout the world, and even the most modern buildings could not overshadow its fame.
The water is cold, even in the summer it does not warm above 18 degrees, and under the bridge, where whirlpools and waves are overlapping, only surfers are at risk of dealing with the elements. From afar, it seems that butterflies are fluttering there – green, red, white sails and paragliders, on which surfers take off above the waves, twist pirouettes and fall on the waves. The path between the parking of snow-white yachts and eucalyptus landings leads to the ocean. The ocean here does not smell like fish, but freshness, iodine and ozone, and the wind howls in the ocher construction of the bridge.
We walk along the marinas with white pleasure boats to the Golden Gate and to the small two-three-story villas of the richest San Francisco residents on the coast. We are already in the fashionable Marina area. Over the past few years, the good old oil tycoons in the area have been replaced by young, educated, slightly strange Internet geniuses and silicone kings. The network boom that started here nearby, in Silicon Valley, has changed the face of the city, which has become younger and has become even more rapid and even more attractive. Paolo Alto from the rich suburbs of San Francisco turned into the world capital of high technology, where overnight skyscrapers with neon logos of Oracle, Macintosh, Microsoft and all other major computer empires grew. Now, when everyone is talking about the decline in Internet business, the city lives on the expectation of the next invention – even more tempting, even more incredible.
In the meantime, Ferrari and Alfa Romeo parked cabriolets are quietly standing in Marina – they are also waiting for the next high point, not a soul in the streets, but you can look into the American rich men through the windows. Fortunately, they are huge in these chic “million” houses, and the golden ocean breathes through the windows at sunset.
Seeing the shining water, the pioneers, gold miners called this place the “Golden Gate” – the exit from the bay, where the sea burns no worse than their just washed gold. On the other side of the Golden Gate are dark cliffs, as in westerns about cowboys. And in the middle of the bay is the gloomy prison of Alcatraz. It was believed that it was impossible to escape from this prison on the island. From 1933 to 1963, many “unlucky celebrities like Al Capone” “unwound” their term here. We will sail there tomorrow on a catamaran in a terrible wind under heavy waves with cheerful Americans, who almost drowned 3 thousand dollars in a waterproof waist pocket.
