Skip to main content

Walkabout

Not exactly an aboriginal activity when the said event took place along the San Francisco shore.  But today being the day before Thanksgiving I decided to stroll the quiet eastern shoreline that is the Embarcadero in the morning hours before the crowds came in.

The weather could not have been better.  An overnight downpour had left the city sidewalks shiny clean and the upcoming sun was soaking my back warm.  Here are a few glimpses of how the walk unfolded.


Along Pier 1 - where nary a soul stirred.  Even the gulls had the day off.
New tallest building pushing into the clouds in its semi finished state - will belong to a software maker that helps run big business in the cloud

For the newbie a few things to note if you happen to visit this part of the world.  The piers are numbered from 1 to 41 with the odd numbers running north from the Ferry Building.
Pier 39 known by some where the sea lions party and an Italian setup a chocolate factory (aka Ghirardelli Chocolate) is at the north end of this walk.

The even numbered piers run south to number 40 from the Ferry Building towards the ATT Baseball park.  The Oakland Bay Bridge pictured below travels due SW from Oakland to put cars into SF.

The Ferry Building as the name suggests is the terminus for local bay plying ferry services due east and north connecting the outer burbs to SF bringing in hordes of commuters on a workday.  Not today.  It is holiday week in the USA and it was just right for my kind of walking.

Raindrops from night before rest on an outdoor table which will soon be hosting some organic burgers and fries 

Financial district with the iconic Transamerica pyramid seen from Pier 1

Coit hill seen from Pier 1
The Panorama is quite the Manorama

If your pedi are tired you can cab it - no takers yet

The farmers market setting up at 10 am

Other local artisan starting to unwrap for the post lunch tourists
A few miles of this morning traipsing and I was a new man.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

But What If We're Wrong?

I attempted to read this book by author Chuck Klosterman backward to forward but it started hurting my brain so I decided to stop and do it like any other publication in the English language.  Start from page 1 and move to the right. Witty, caustic and thought provoking this is a book you want to read if you believe that the status quo might, just might be wrong. At times bordering on being contrarian about most things around us it tries to zero in on the notion of what makes anything believable and certain in our minds.  The fact that there is a fact itself is ironic.  Something analogous to the idea that you can never predict the future because there is no future. Many books and movies have tried to play on this concept - best that I recollect (I think I am) was 'The Truman Show'.  This book by Klosterman attempts to provoke the reader to at least contemplate that what they think they know may be wrong. He uses examples like concept of gravity, and how it ...

Peru, South America - Week well spent

Growing up in India the only Peru I knew of was a tropical fruit (Guava for those whose lingua is English).   Not until high school did I discover that it was also a country in the South American continent. So it was this early April week that we decided to hit up Peru - the land of the once glorious Inca people that lived 500 years ago.  Today Peru is the third largest country on that continent with a diverse geography that stretches from the drier Pacific coast plains to the high mountains of the Andes and the Amazon river valley to its east. Our trip was primarily a pilgrimage of sorts to visit the last remaining, lost (now found and documented), large scale, mostly undamaged, city of the Inca nobility, called Machu Picchu (MP).  The Inca were great architects and builders.  MP is a UNESCO world heritage site affording it high visibility to the tourism trade and therefore crowded year round.  Our timing was not quite high season allowing us...

You are important to us

Followed by piano music.   Followed by 'we are experiencing heavier than usual call volume'.  Sounds macabre like bleeding during menstruation or after a ghastly attack with a weapon on a hemophiliac.  Sorry Mrs. Johnson but it appears little Gertrude here has been bleeding heavier than usual what with her night time activities competing with the woodchucks in your neighborhood. Some services even go as far as to pick a random day to say - 'if you were to call us during the Chinese lunar month when the moon is axiomatically hugging the polar star with Jupiter intravenous when call volume is light'.  Well I will be damned.  I thought  I had checked with my astrologer before I placed this well focused call but  I guess this is what you get for listening to a quack. Umph! I am not sure which marketing genius came up with this personal touch concept of informing the caller that you are really a jackass for actually calling the customer serv...