San Francisco, day second, the morning...

To read previous part click here -> Streets of San Francisco, end of the first day

We are all tired when we are traveling. especially if we are walking a lot... But let's see the bright side of it - we all also sleep really well because of the tiredness ;) So we woke up next morning well rested and ready for some adventures. But first we needed breakfast. What is the best place for breakfast in San Francisco? We didn't know that, but we thought of the old piers, where you can find a small nice place where they serve you some hot coffee, maybe an omelet made from fresh eggs and a nice view to the bay and Alcatraz island is included :-) What can be better?

 

After breakfast we walked along the quiet morning streets heading to Telegraph Hill. We passed by a nice old church and some buildings in Chinatown.

 

Nice pink music store and stylish copy center, huh?

Again, as yesterday we stopped at the intersections and... looked at the streets running up and down the hills. The Telegraph Tower is on the left, by the way ;)

Or tried to figure out how it is possible to bring the car into these garages?

Higher we climbed to the hill, the more amazing views to the city we had.

Telegraph Hill is one of the highest hills in San Francisco and you can observe the city from there. The hill owes its name to a semaphore, a windmill-like structure erected in September 1849, for the purpose of signaling to the rest of the city the nature of the ships entering the Golden Gate. Atop the newly built house, the marine telegraph consisted of a pole with two raisable arms that could form various configurations, each corresponding to a specific meaning: steamer, sailing boat, etc. The information was used by observers operating for financiers, merchants, wholesalers and speculators. Knowing the nature of the cargo carried by the ship they could predict the upcoming (generally lower) local prices for those goods and commodities carried. 

The pole-and-arm signals on the Telegraph Hill semaphore became so well known to townspeople that, according to one story, during a play in a San Francisco theater, an actor held his arms aloft and cried, "Oh God, what does this mean?," prompting a rogue in the gallery to shout, "Sidewheel steamer!," which brought down the house.

But later the hill lost its important duty because of electrical telegraph and was just another hill for years. Later, in 1933 they built a memorial tower here and now you can have some good time observing the surrounding area from this point. Wandering there you can see the bridges and Alcatraz island from the bird's view.

We climbed to the tower and were walking around the gallery watching at the downtown skyscrapers and to the Russian Hill. And sure we were looking at the bridges - Oakland Bay Bridge and the more famous Golden Gate Bridge.

 

By the way, you can even see Lombard St from this tower. You can easily recognize its meander even from such a big distance. 

The art deco Coit Tower, built of unpainted reinforced concrete, was designed by architects Arthur Brown, Jr. and Henry Howard, with fresco murals by 27 different on-site artists and their numerous assistants, plus two additional paintings installed after creation off-site. 

Finally we left this tower and took the very last look at the Golden Gate Bridge from the viewpoint before moving further, to our next stop - Chinatown again :-)

To continue reading click here -> San Francisco, day two, Chinatown and more

Pictures were taken on August 31, 2011.