Travel – Page 25 – Willem's Planet

October 4, 2016March 2, 2018

Tuesday/ Market Street

It was a beautiful 63°F/ 17°C outside today when I took a walk at lunch time around the north end of Market Street here in downtown San Francisco.

img_7581-sm — This is the corner of the Palace Hotel on Market Street. There is a Ghirardelli Chocolate store inside.

img_7590-sm — The date on the Patrick & Co building on Sansome St says 1906: the year of the San Francisco Earthquake. A fire destroyed the building after the earthquake, but in 1920 the building was remodeled, and the stationary store was in business once again.

img_7603-sm — Here the Muni train arriving at Embarcadero station. If you’re just going a few stops, the Muni train is much nicer than the BART.

October 3, 2016October 3, 2016

It’s Monday, and so : to San Francisco

Man! I think I deserve a public transportation gold star for my extensive use of it today. To wit: early morning, I took the bus downtown to go to the dentist; took the light rail and bus back home; an hour later ran out to the airport by bus and light rail, took Alaska Airlines to San Francisco; stopped at the office for two hours at the Embarcadero station, and then went back and took the BART train out to Walnut Creek. (There is another convention or something going on in the city, and all the hotel rooms are double their normal expensive rates).

img_7543-sm — Twelve fashion faux pas offered by the Men’s Health magazine in the dentist’s office. (Hey, I don’t have any of those items in my closet. But now I know to steer clear).

img_7556-sm — Our Alaska Airlines plane to San Francisco was at the far end of the North Terminal. There is no jet way there; the passengers walk down a set of stairs, out onto the tarmac and onto the plane. (It’s actually nice, in a way, to go outside, feel the cool air, and step into the plane).

September 29, 2016September 30, 2016

Thursday/ home

I took the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train to San Francisco airport again, today. (There was a terrible commuter train crash this morning at the Hoboken Terminal train station, on the New Jersey side of Manhattan. A woman on the platform was struck by debris and killed, and some 114 passengers on the train were injured).

Check out the Amazon Prime Air cargo plane that I spotted at out arrival at Seattle airport.

img_7511sm2 — Here’s Amazon’s first ‘Prime Air’ Boeing 767-300, spotted as we landed at Sea-Tac airport. The plane is operated by Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings Inc., and one of 40 that Amazon has agreed to lease as it broadens its system for shipping and delivering goods quickly. There had been Christmases where Amazon’s delivery partners United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp. could not keep up with the deluge of parcels to deliver by Christmas Day, and Amazon is jumping into the logistics fray with its own airplanes.

September 28, 2016March 2, 2018

Wednesday/ Fog City

Well, the heat is gone. It was decidedly cool tonight at 6.30 pm on San Francisco’s streets (57 °F/ 13°C), with the high buildings shrouded in the fog that blanketed the city.

img_7462-sm — Here’s the mural across from the No 38 bus stop on O’Farrell Street (see? the bus in the mural is No 38). I’m on my way in to the office; 7.30 am in the morning.

img_7477-sm — This is the inside of Powell Street station in downtown San Francisco. The Muni Metro train to Powell Street Station is my other means of transportation. I can walk to the hotel from there.

img_7481-sm — This is the corner of Powell Street and Ellis Street .. check out the fog around the building a few blocks away.

September 26, 2016March 2, 2018

Monday/ it’s warm in San Francisco

img_7423-sm — I love this depiction of Einstein, wild hair and all (at the Saleasforce Tower constructon site). It’s the Salesforce Einstein, the artificial intelligence ‘engine’ in Salesforce that analyses customer and sales data.

There was a giant mosquito caught in a little spider’s web in the corner of my front door’s frame this morning when I left the house at 5.15 am.

Our flight out to San Francisco went without delay. There was no fog around, at all. The reason : it was a record (94°F /34°C) in San Francisco on Sunday, and still very warm today ( 90°F/ 32°C). It does look like we are on a cooling curve with the day time highs for the rest of the week here, though.

img_7418-sm — Here is the Pacific Gas And Electric Company building where I work on my project. That must be a California grizzly bear down below, surrounded by farm produce. The building was completed in 1971 and has 34 floors.

img_7421-sm — Here’s an up-to-date picture of the Salesforce Tower’s construction progress.

September 22, 2016

Thursday/ plane, train and bus

img_7371-sm — Arriving at Sea-Tac Airport’s North Terminal.

img_7372-sm — Here comes the north-bound train (at the Sea-Tac airport station).

img_7374-sm — And here is the No 10 bus that takes me that last mile up the hill to Capitol Hill, so that I don’t have to drag my suitcase along for ten blocks.

Our flight into Seattle arrived 30 minutes late today. We flew into a strong headwind of about 110 mph for most of the way. Our pilot said that with a tailwind the airplane would could go as much as 120 miles per gallon, per passenger, but that today it would probably be closer to 60 miles per gallon, per passenger.

So .. with a motorcycle or scooter and say, 24 hrs to work with (instead of 2 hours!), I could have made it to Seattle with more or less the same fuel consumption compared to flying up with the airplane !

September 19, 2016September 19, 2016

Monday/ light rain

It was raining lightly this morning when the Uber driver stopped at my house to take me to the airport. ‘Drop me at Arrivals’ I instructed him as we approached the airport (some mornings there is such a crush on the approach to the Departures level, that one is stuck in the taxi for 10 or 15 minutes) .. but it was not reallynecessary. The summer holidays are over, and the airport is much quieter than just a week or two ago.

img_7347-sm — It’s 6.35 am on Monday morning, and I’m just settling into seat 9A on Alaska Airlines 222 to San Francisco.

September 14, 2016March 2, 2018

Wednesday/ Post & Taylor Streets

Every night this week, after taking the bus uphill to the hotel, I have walked back down to Union Square and Market Street to get something to eat.

The sun sets at 7.15 pm, leaving just enough daylight to check out the buildings that line Post, Taylor and O’Farrell Streets.

img_7240-sm — Here’s the lie of the land for downtown San Francisco. The green diagonal street is Market Street, and SOMA means South of Market Street.

img_7239-sm — This is the Owl Tree Bar, a hole-in-the-wall bar on the corner of Post and Taylor Streets. It has red carpeting and black leather booths inside.

img_7261-sm — Here is 420 Taylor, the current headquarters of bulletin-board discussion/ social media company Reddit. Reddit is a play on ‘I read it on Reddit’ and bills itself as ‘the front page of the internet’.

img_7238-sm — 666 Post is an apartment building, beautifully refurbished inside and out, from the looks of it.

img_7267-sm — And here is Foley’s Irish House on O’Farrell. ‘Time for a Pint’ (of Guinness, I’m sure) says the sign on the corner.

September 13, 2016

Tuesday/ the No 38 Muni bus

My mode of transport to the office this week is by Muni bus, the No 38 (the others : on foot, BART, Uber, taxi, street car). The bus is crowded, and carries the world : Indian people, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, European (tourists, but just one or two), African American and hey, even a South African American.

*Not really an option for me, unless I pack a folding bicycle like the one dude that got into the elevator today.

Here’s my bus route : O’Farrell to Market Street, and then I get dropped off in front of my office building. Walk for 4 mins to the bus stop, says Google, and then 6 stops/ 10 mins on the bus.

img_7224-sm — Here’s an old building from my cheating bank (Wells Fargo), as seen from the bus. ‘SAFE DEPOSIT VAULT’ says the gold letters at the base of the corner pillar. Well, those days are long, long gone. Our money is all digital, zeroes and ones, now .. and is it safe?

September 12, 2016March 2, 2018

Monday/ Union Square (sort of)

Monday was the start of another week for in San Francisco for me, and I’m staying in the Courtyard Marriott ‘Union Square’. The name of the hotel is a little bit of a stretch, seeing that Union Square is five blocks away. The area around the hotel does have a good inventory of art deco buildings, and art galleries.

img_7180-sm — Here’s the Taylor Hotel (no frills-budget hotel) on Taylor Street.

img_7199-sm — I love the green copper clad Art Deco exterior of the Skechers (shoe store) building on the corner of O’Farrell and Powell.

img_7174-sm — This apartment building is on the corner of Sutter and Leavenworth.

September 7, 2016

Wednesday/ this week’s street cars

I still get to ride in ‘new’ street cars (‘new’ to me, not new to the world!) – and so here they are, the ones that took me to the office on Tuesday morning and Wednesday morning.

img_7047-sm — Street car 1032 used to be painted white and green. It was built in 1948 and has been operating in San Francisco since the 1970s.

img_7077-sm — This is another Italian-designed and built street car, that had done some service in Milan. It was built in 1928, and still has wooden benches inside that runs along the length of the street car.

September 5, 2016September 5, 2016

Monday/ late flight out

It was the Labor Day holiday today in the United States (so: no work), marking the unofficial end of summer. Back to school for the kids this week (finally), and back on the road for me. I took a late flight out to San Francisco. Our workshop starts too early in the morning for me to make it in with a morning flight. I took a taxi from San Francisco airport for the 14 miles or so to get me to the hotel in Fisherman’s Wharf. Kind of too late to take BART, and the Embarcadero station is still 2 or 3 miles away from the hotel.

IMG_7027 sm — Here’s our approach to San Francisco International airport. That’s the Bay Bridge, with Yuerba Buena Island (not really visible) and Treasure Island to the left of the bridge. The other lights in the water on the right are from anchored ships. The bright diagonal street in the foreground that runs ‘parallel’ to the Bridge, is Market Street.

August 30, 2016

Sunday/ beautiful subway stations

CNN mentions the photographs of Chris Forsyth, a 20-year old Montreal resident in an article, and I loved to check them out. Hey, I have even been to a few.

8-29-2016 11-04-11 PM — I am making a note of this subway station called Stadion in Stockholm for my trip there some time in the next two to three years. (Take the subway to see another subway station : I like it!).

IMG_4988 sm — Here’s the Überseequartier station in Hamburg, by Hafencity. It took this picture in April this year. It looks brand spanking new with all the gleaming surfaces, but I see the station has been open since November 2012.

August 26, 2016August 26, 2016

Thursday/ airport time again

IMG_6912 sm2 — We’re taxiing out to the runway at San Francisco airport, and I am admiring the hulking frame of the Air France A380, about to depart for its 10h 35m flight to Paris.

Since I was in the City by the Bay all week, I could simply catch the BART train to the airport today.

There must have been many thousands of late summer visitors from overseas in San Francisco, because the security line to the gates at the International Terminal was the longest I had ever seen it. I could use my pre-check status and use the expedited line, and it took barely three minutes to breeze through.

IMG_6894 sm — Here’s my ride to the office on Thursday morning. Street car 1058 is painted in the Chicago Transit Authority’s “green hornet” livery. Chicago ran PCC streetcars from 1936 to 1958, and at one time had the largest PCC fleet ever purchased new by one city–683 cars.

August 26, 2016March 2, 2018

Wednesday night/ Lombard Street

8-25-2016 9-28-15 PM — Lombard Street runs along the eastern segment in the Russian Hill neighborhood.

IMG_6881 sm — Here is an early evening view from the top of the crooked section of Lombard Street (it’s nicely paved with brick all the way down). I believe that’s the straight section of Lombard Street in the distance, running by the hilltop on the right with Coit Tower at its top.

IMG_6893 sm — Just an interesting apartment or condo building that I walked by. The homes in the neighborhood are eclectic : all a little different, or Victorian, or unusual.

There was a picture of Lombard Street (‘the world’s crookedest street’, with its 8 hairpin turns in one street block), in my hotel room. And since it was just a few blocks away from the hotel, I had to go check it out.

August 24, 2016August 24, 2016

Tuesday/ street car to the office

IMG_6788 sm — Here’s my fancy Japanese ‘bento’ box lunch that I bought in the Ferry Building in the Embarcadero.

IMG_6780 sm — My street car to the office this morning was built in 1946. The car’s exterior commemorates Washington DC, which operated PCC streetcars from 1937 to 1962. The car was acquired by San Francisco’s Muni from New Jersey Transit, Newark, NJ, in 2004.

I’m staying in the Marriott at Fisherman’s Wharf here in San Francisco .. so I can take the Line F street car to the office in the morning, and back again in the evening.

The weather here is cool, some 55°F/ 12°C in the mornings. I was ready and like a good ‘boy scout’ checked the weather forecast before I came out here and packed my thicker jacket.

August 23, 2016August 23, 2016

Monday/ to San Francisco, Embarcadero

San Francisco Bay was foggy this morning, and so our flight down was delayed by an hour. (I start on another new project this week). The summer crowds at the airport are thinning out, but still lots of families traveling. Next to me on the flight was a dad and his 6 or 7-year old son. The kid pulled a big stuffed elephant and a teddy bear out of his backpack as he settled into his seat, and then he was ready to go.

IMG_6772 sm2 — We had just arrived at SFO’s International Terminal. This very purple plane is from Wow! the low-fare airline from Iceland, offers direct flights to Reykjavik, for as low as $399 return.

IMG_6776 sm — This is the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Embarcadero Station, my stop from the airport. The BART platform is the one all the way down, and that is a Muni train approaching on the right. If San Francisco was in Germany, the BART platform would be the S-bahn (the regional train), and the Muni line would be the U-bahn (the city’s underground train).

August 12, 2016August 12, 2016

Thursday/ a flying fish

Another week at the project office is done. Our short project – adding some extensions and improvements to the big work management solution we had previously built over 12 months – is almost done. We are testing the improvements for the ‘August Release’.

8-11-2016 11-02-03 PM — The project office is in San Ramon, over on the east side of the Bay. It is a little shorter to drive across the dreary Hayward-San Mateo Bridge instead of the Bay Bridge to the north, to get to San Francisco airport.

IMG_6625 sm2 — Is it a fish? Is it a plane? Our Alaska Airlines 737 at the gate at San Francisco airport’s International Terminal, shortly before we boarded.

August 9, 2016

Monday/ to San Francisco

I took the No 10 bus & Light Rail train out to Seattle-Tacoma airport again this morning, to fly to San Francisco. The airports are still crammed with summer travellers for a few more weeks until it is back-to-school time. A good thing I was flying Alaska Airlines : it was a bad day for Delta Airlines’ operations with a catastrophic failure in its computer system. (From the NBC News website : ‘Tens of thousands of Delta passengers around the world were stranded Monday after a power outage at its Atlanta headquarters caused a global computer failure that halted all flights’.).

IMG_6605 sm — ‘Welcome aboard’ says the lettering, just as I’m stepping into the Alaska Airlines plane at Seattle-Tacoma airport. I lucked out with an upgrade and sat up front today.

August 2, 2016August 2, 2016

Monday/ bus, train, plane, rental car

IMG_6262 sm — The No 10 bus that I am on, is taking me to the Capitol Hill train station. The bus looks like the one in the picture. (It’s an ‘all-electric trolley bus’).

IMG_6265 sm — Here’s Capitol Hill train station, with a southbound train on the left and a northbound train on the right. (I’m about to get onto the southbound one to the airport).

Hey! I took the early evening flight out to San Francisco today, and could take the light rail train from my Capitol Hill neighborhood to the airport.

IMG_6274 sm — We had just landed at San Francisco airport. Here’s a London-bound British Air 747 at the gate, and in the distance with the striped tail-fin is an Air France jetliner.

Alas, when I had arrived at San Francisco airport, it was the end of public transportation. I rented a car, since there is no easy way to get from my hotel to the project office.