California,16th November, an elevated tour around San Francisco and Chinatown

June 02, 2015

We woke to a pink dawn outside our hotel and determined that we should go back to the diner in the Mission district we had visited on our first day in California. This was about a 20 minute walk and when we got there it was packed out. We had forgotten it was Sunday. In fact anywhere offering breakfast was full, so we went back to the hotel where, actually the breakfast was not half bad.

To get an overview of San Francisco we took the bus down towards the monumental Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill.. This was built by Lillie Hitchcock Coit in 1934 as a monument to San Francisco firefighters. Lillie seems to have been a firefighter groupie, rarely missing a fire or a fireman's funeral and having the firehouse emblem embroidered on her bed sheets!

After getting off the bus there was a little walk before we got to the bottom of the tower, which you can see in the last picture in this series.

Inside the tower the ground floor is decorated with murals showing ' the workers' in a very 30's style. These and the artists who created them were later denounced as communists but the pictures are now protected as historic landmarks. The artists were from the faculty and students of the California School of Fine Art supervised by Ralph Stackpole and Bernard Stackheim.

A lift takes you to the top of the tower and there is a 360￮ view of the city through glass windows, which were not necessary open. It was quite crowded at the top but I still managed to get some pictures. At the bottom of the tower is a statue of Columbus.

After visiting the tower we thought we should make our way to Chinatown, passing St Peter and Paul Church and Washington Square on the way. As I idly snapped at the church I did not realise what a history it had. As a Catholic church it was bombed six times in the space of a year, 1926 -27, by anarchists, 2 of whom died, being shot by the police while they were attempting to light the fuse of yet another bomb. It was also used in the Dirty Harry movies and Joe DiMaggio's funeral was held there. In fact Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio posed for their wedding photographs on the steps of the church. They could not be married in the church as they were both divorced. It is now used by the Chinese Catholic community and some masses are held in mandarin. Opposite the church is a park, Washington Square, where there was quite a lot of community action going on.

We walked down the main street in Chinatown taking in the sights and even doing a little shopping for souvenirs. At the street corners there were old men playing strange stringed instruments with a little pot for coins next to them