San Francisco #4

And so we come to the end of a much too short three-day visit to the fascinating City of St. Francis. I wasn't as taken with the architecture here as much as in Boston or Chicago, but there are wonderful views, especially of and from the waterfront.

The MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) has an appropriately unique home, build around a central sunlit column.

Any individual's choice of favourites from the collection will be correspondingly unique. Here is one of mine, though I'm not really sure why!



The concept of modern art was my inspiration for this angle shot of one of the galleries. I think it works.

And here is my favourite from MOMA. The guard fit perfectly into the scene. As I took it a neighbouring guard commented, "You'll be on a magazine cover!" 'Fraid not, but he did make it onto the Internet.

The de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park is another home of the fine arts and on my visit had a fascinating display of modern creations.

This is a look into a block of acrylic, carved and coloured so that it can be viewed as a sort of static kaleidoscope. Of course, one picture cannot do it justice.

And this piece reminds me of the gigantic silver sculpture in the waterfront park of Chicago.

The West Coast of the US has a reputation for wierdness. Perhaps it's well-founded but just out-dated. Or maybe I didn't go to the right places. Whatever, it didn't seem unduly wierd to this tourist from Toronto (or thereabouts).

The trolleys lived up to their hype,

and there is Lombard Street, "the crookedest street in the world", which I walked up while everyone else was driving down,

and I got a picture of this sample of west coast wildlife in McDonald's

but all-in-all things seemed relatively sane and a great place to visit. Thank you, San Francisco!

And now it's back to the salt mines (aka "the barracks") and here I am preparing some trenching for a concrete below-grade wall to help waterproof and support our almost two centuries old limestone building.