San Francisco #2 (Most pictures will enlarge if you left-click on them.)

About a mile and a half along the Embarcadero from my hotel is Pier 39, a major tourist hangout. Lots of boutique stores, little restaurants, children's rides as well as



hundreds of seals just lounging around


an aquarium next door

and upside-down busses passing by.

You can get a good view of Alcatraz, which I didn't visit but sailed nearby on the cruise boat.

The cruise went out to the Golden Gate Bridge. Of course, that is a mandatory picture-take, but I couldn't figure out how to get a good one from our vantage point and with the foggy weather. Actually, foggy weather is a staple of the GGB. So I took some other shots.

A couple of days later, on Sunday afternoon, I took a long walk at the Presidio, for many years a military staging base and now a fascinating combination of the arts, recreation and history, run by the National Park Service. There I took a shot of the Golden Gate Bridge from land.

and one of the Palace of the Fine Arts at the Presidio. Didn't get inside this time, but maybe next!