Friday 30 August saw us down Mason St and across Market to 6th Street where the hostel had advised us to find Dottie’s True Blue Café. It was clearly a goodie as there was a queue outside. On the edge of the Tenderloin district, there were even more homeless and damaged people on the streets. I’m ashamed to say that, in contrast, we had a huge and delicious breakfast, sharing our table with a young couple from southern California. The food and coffee were excellent and our great, onto-it waitress was from (American?) Samoa.
A walk back along Market St to SF’s MOMA where we would have spent time had it not cost an arm and a leg to get in, let alone more for the Magritte feature exhibition. So we wandered in the Yerba Buena gardens nearby, taking in the diverse high-rise landscape behind, and happened across the Martin Luther King memorial waterfall which was hauntingly moving.
[A few random things that struck us in San Francisco: Bay windows and fire escapes – the latter often very decorative; the prevalence of post-1906 (earthquake) architecture and art deco buildings; the number of homeless people – many of whom are casualties of the downturn in the early years of this century; the anti-Trump voices on the street and in conversation; New Zealand flora, including pohutukawa, manuka and cabbage tree; wonderful murals everywhere.]
Then back to the hostel, shuttle to the airport and Virgin Atlantic flight (which made Air NZ look rather shabby) to Heathrow. Quickly through immigration, no customs to speak of and only a wait to do the paperwork for the rental car before onto the M4 to South Wales. Forgetting about the snarl on the mororway (roadworks ment crawling for miles), crossing the Severn and entering Wales was emotional. That lovely green, wooded, rolling countryside that embodies Britain for me, with mostly sheep pasture around the Cheapstow area.
JaneRussell journeys 