"Confession" a San Francisco Travel Page by Rusket

I confess: I have done all the touristy things in San Francisco, like Fishermans Warf, pier 39, Alcatraz and Golden Gate. I find it a bit arrogant when I see that many of these things are mentioned as tourist traps here on VT. Coming from the other side of the world having seen all this in numerous movies and TV shows, it is great to see it IRL! I loved it all; the hills, the trams, the firetower, the sea lions, chinatown ...

But I have done a few not so touristy things, too. We were lucky to have local guides: My cousin Karen who was born right on the other side of the bay, and her family, with whom we stayed for a whole month. And a couple of times my son and I went into town on our own, just to travel with BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit). We took it all the way from Walnut Creek to the end :-)

One of the very american things I did was going out for breakfast having Eggs Benedict and maple syrup pancakes. I don't know why so many americans love such a greasy, high calory, heavy meal early in the morning! Myself, I felt sick the whole day after I ate it. But it was a nice experienece anyway, after a nice evening out with one of the young adults of the family, including sleeping over at one of her friends' house, leaving my son in the safe hands of my cousin :-)

This picture is very special: It was in the stone age, you know, before I had a digital camera, and it was the last picture on the roll. Changing the film roll in a hurry before entering Alcatraz, something must have gone wrong; none of the pictures taken on the rest of the trip came to, which I did not realize until I got home :-( Fortunately the camera was reparable, it did not even cost me anything, but I lost a LOT of pictures taken in Disneyland, Mojave Desert, Sacramento, ...