Another place - another post

Finally. It's been a while coming but it's been a big week - so it's nice to be able to spend the weekend in San Francisco before heading out to San Ramon for meetings there next week. This was the view from my bedroom window this morning - still haven't quite got the times right because I wasn't actually planning to see dawn in the City by the Bay, but I'm glad I did.
I arrived yesterday afternoon and took myself off on the Muni (public transport) to see what I could see. The Muni is good - you can ride for 2 hours for $1.50 and the buses and trolley cars go all over. I'm still to locate a map of which routes go where - it was fairly hit and miss yesterday but I wanted to see everything so it didn't really matter - but today I want to go to specific places. Hopefully I'll be able to track down a better map than I currently have.
So one of the things I did yesterday, apart from riding public transport, was to take a cruise on the Bay, out under the Golden Gate Bridge and around Alcatraz (Island). It was a smallish boat but a wonderful way to get cold (the heat wave that had settled on California causing around 100 deaths has now moved to the East Coast) and wet. Unfortunately during a bag swap in a slightly over-tired and befuddled stated, I left my spare battery back at the hotel - and for the first time ever found myself with a flat camera battery and some great shots going missing. Torture ... made worse by the lack of capability of the camera in the mobile phone. D'oh. I may need to re-do the cruise tonight. Hope I can get the $10 ticket again.
Of course, San Francisco is not just about "the Bridge". There's also hills. It's hard to capture just how steep they are - that's one of the things I'll be attempting today. As we were sitting half-way up a hill at a bus stop yesterday, I found myself thanking the inventor of effective braking systems - and hoping that the Muni never skips on brake maintenance. It would be horrific to think about a fully loaded trolley car hurtling backwards down one of the hills. Hmmm. Of course, from that, it would come as no surprise to know that I woke at one point during the night thinking "now what do you do in case of an earthquake?" Especially when you're on the 19th floor. The hills of San Francisco are due to much seismic disturbance - the last big one being back in 1989.