If there is a paradise on earth, it is San Francisco, wow!!! Yes, we finally made it. To the best city in the country. No, it is not more beautiful, nor more interesting, and not even richer. It is just different. It is livelier, brighter, more intense. It is as if someone wiped the glass clean for you after a long journey. Or you finally found the contrast button on your TV remote. Or someone finally took hot, golden pastries out of the oven while you were only imagining them. It is the only Pacific city I have been lucky enough to see in the USA. Since I am from the Pacific coast myself, finding such a city was a matter of honor. And it was found. If there were only two sister cities in the world, they would be San Francisco and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. And they are similar not in their buildings, but in the air; not in their people, but in the color of the water. It is one of the three US cities where I just wanted to breathe. In short, it is wonderful) And in general, this city is exactly how it should be. The water is not like in Myrtle Beach, but real, deep blue, oceanic; the waves are not like in Charleston, but huge, underwater, rhythmically rocking the boats; the air is not ordinary, but exactly what it should be to make you want to live. On the first day, we arrived at the pier by the park. We stepped out and it felt like we were struck. Yes, this is IT. Here and there, squads of important inspector-pelicans scurry about, seagulls fly. The entire bay is covered in low-hanging clouds that, without any manners, leave the bay to dart through the streets. The city is truly a roller coaster; sometimes it seems that the road's incline is 50 degrees, and the car will fall onto its roof rather than keep going))) In the park not far from the pier, there is an amazing scene. Look to the left - America, straight ahead - some kind of Middle East, to the right - Africa, some Tunisian coast; walk out to the pier and look at the fortress of Alcatraz and the sailboat with the hills in the distance - it is pure Mediterranean. I have not been to any of these places (except America, of course), but if asked what it is like, I will answer - like this. When we arrived on the second day, we went out to the same pier again and were amazed that the impressions were exactly the same. That never happens!!! The first time is always the best. But not here. Here, emotions do not fade, no matter how much you feed them. When we were standing on the pier, suddenly out of the corner of my eye, it seemed like someone was looking at us from the water. We turn around - no one. A minute passed - the same thing again. Then again. So we turn around and start peering into the water. And suddenly, three meters from us, a furry, wide-eyed SEA LION pops up. Just like that, a real one. It snorts and busily dives back down. Then more and more, different ones. And only later did we learn that there is an entire rookery of them here in the city near the piers nearby... In the park, we met a guy who had also traveled the whole world, an art historian who worked at the Louvre, and then there was Downtown. The center. The city lives, works, but everything is somehow special, sometimes a bit toy-like, sometimes strange, but veeery bright. I heard that there are more homosexuals here than anywhere else. Well, if that is the case, then the guys at least have a sense of taste..)) After the center - a Presbyterian cathedral with ridiculous stained glass, mighty buildings of the city hall and the opera house in a European-like historical center, then Chinatown with the Chinese, the Japanese district - with the Japanese, etc. A separate line in the city is the Golden Gate Bridge. It is a pure symbol of the city. Graceful, breathtaking, and unique. We saw it in the fog, in the sun, and day and night. And it is always what draws the eye, wherever you are... What about us?) Our hotel for these 4 days was in Silicon Valley, right by the Stanford research building and not far
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