“San Francisco is poetry. Even the hills rhyme.”
-Pat Montandon
I have a thing for bridges. They connect the opposites, open new possibilities. They fascinate me endlessly with their elegance and beauty and engineering marvelousness. And that’s why the Golden Gate Bridge was very high on my wish list of things to see with my own eyes for as long as I can remember.
I keep coming back to the images from that road trip, one of the best road trips we have done (well, maybe it is THE best), across Northern California and Pacific Northwest, just over a year ago. It started and finished in San Francisco, giving us plenty of chances to see the bridge from near and far, walk the bridge, touch its steel cables, be stuck in traffic in the middle of the bridge, etc. etc. I was happy.
The City by the Bay played its famous trick on us pretty much as soon as we arrived. The sun was shining, the air was clear and deceptively warm. Dragging our jet-lagged selves up the Powell Street hill and then down the hill toward the Fisherman’s Wharf made us feel even warmer. And then the fog rolled in. Right at the time when we climbed onto the open-top, bright-red, super-touristy bus that would take us to the Golden Gate. To finally see it with our own eyes. Everything was suddenly gray, wet, miserable, and it became incredibly cold. Bone-penetratingly cold.
And that’s how we met. The Bridge and a bus load of shaking tourists, in the thick milky fog that revealed the engineering wonder bit by bit, cable by cable, as we made our way through the slow Labour Day weekend traffic.
Thankfully San Francisco fogs do not hang, they roll. And we did see the bridge in all its glory, but later. In midday sun, glowing red. At sunset, from Baker Beach. At night, from Fort Point. And I took hundreds and hundreds of pictures of it, from every angle possible, so I could go back to those moments when I stood in front of it in awe.
Ahhh, SF. We did not have enough days to explore all you have to offer but we certainly did our best. And thank you for letting my wish come true.
