"****page under construction-Photos to come soon!!*" San Francisco by Nemoa

If I ever was offered to move to a place on Earth and only one, and I only had a chance to move there I would choose San Francisco without any doubt.

Maybe some of the people reading this pages will live there and they might find this naive, as the cities are never what they seem to be when you go as a tourist.

I would be ready to take up to the challenge. I absolutely fell in love with San Francisco and I have visited many places since I was there but I still love the place.

The light just seems brighter than anywhere else and the eclectic mix you find in the city has something to offer to every single one.

In my particular case I only spent there a few days and I visited most of the city on foot and by bus but in my mind there is very fond memories of this place and I don't want to lose them.

That is why, a bit late, I am doing this pages. To share with you my (tourist) vision of San Francisco and to show you some of the things I saw and enjoyed there!

Hope you enjoy the pages too and that they will not contain many innacuracies!!

If you find any, please let me know as my aim is not only to write about the place but to give some information if possible to potential visitors.

The first documented inhabitants of San Francisco were the Ohlone people. They settled in the area and lived in simple and mobile villages harvesting whatever the landscape had to offer to them. This was of course until the Europeans and more in particular the Spanish took over the situation.

This coast was first spotted by Portuguese navigator Cabrillo who, on that time "worked" for the Spanish navy but because of its very particular landscape nobody saw at the begining the comercial posibilities of the bay. Well, I even think that if it was shrouded in fog as it is very often today maybe they did not see it at all :-)

It was oly in the 18th Century that the Spanish started to colonise this area and only by mistake as in their search for territory where to found missions, presidios (forts) and pueblos (villages) they head towards Monterrey and somehow they missed it and ended up in the Bay but again they did not see the posibilities of the area and only some years after another party came to the bay exploring and found out a fantastic bay which was to serve very well their purposes as a port .

And so, the Spanish settled here and built the presidio and started to colonise the Ohlone inhabitants in order to gain them for the catholic faith. My impression is that first they bored them to death with their preachings and later they kill them for good by imposing them hard labour that was needed to make the swamps and the sands fertile.

It was not a great success as an economic enterprise and San Francisco only got to get a bit of life after the Mexicans took over by getting their independence from the Spanish.

And all of a sudden.... GOLD!

In 1848 gold was discovered in the Sierra and Sanfrancisco was flooded by all sort of people swept by the gold rush and the locals started a very prosperous commerce by supplying to the needs of the miners. And so San Francisco started to become a bit of the very lively, crazy and funfilled place it is today...

More precious mineral and silver was discovered in HIgh Sierra and people started to build wealth. Lush manisons started to appear in Nob Hill and the railroad and....

The city grew big and wild in such a extent that only a big disaster managed to stop it.

This was the earthquake of 1906 and the fires that followed it almost totally destroyed the city to the point that it had to be almost totally reconstructed.

The rest is recent history and American history indeed with the arrival of the Great Depression and the WWII.

The bottom line is that such a sucession of events has made of San Francisco one of the most cosmopolitan places and more mixed up and more eclectic and ...absolutely fantastic. I don't think that anyone can get bored in this city because whatever lights your fire, I am sure you can find it here