San Francisco 30 years on

We managed to find one corner of Fishermans Wharf that hadn't changed.

Otherwise San Francisco has certainly seen some changes since we were last here in 1980.  Much of it seems to have happened, however, in the last 5 years or so.  The Ferry building, for example, only underwent its transformation in 2003 and is now a collection of attractive specialist shops and restaurants on the waterfront. Ghirardelli Square is almost all new and downtown is now huge modern skyscrapers.

What doesn't change is the terrain. The cable cars still struggle up and down the city's ferocious hills.  A new tram system - the F-line - has extended the city's transport infrastructure and we found that for $13 each we could travel around all day long.  Given we were only able to stay for 48 hours we managed to see quite a lot and we extracted every ounce of value from our travel passes.

Also impressive was the service we found in the local CVS drug store. The assistants are fluent in so many languages - Spanish, Croation, Chinese, Vietnamese.....such an educated population. Once we'd tracked down the 'mowti-weetameen session on owl sis' we actually found what we were looking for.  You'd never get that at Boots!

Well, it's now good-bye San Francisco and off to Hawaii.  We've just time for a surprisingly good breakfast muffin at the airport and we're on the 8:45 flight out.  Hawaii here we come.

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