Photograph by Phil Coblentz courtesy of the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau. Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill, Fisherman's Wharf, Pacific Heights, and the Presidio, some 15,000 mostly unpaved acres. The view from the ferry notwithstanding, San Francisco is really a walker's city, although the map can deceive.
Distances are considerable and require occasional lifts by bus, taxi, or cable car.
Market Street runs diagonally through the heart of the city, and I head southwest on it, passing the financial district and turning right toward Union Square. This locus of such symbols as I. Magnin, Macy's, and Saks Fifth Avenue also harbors Gump's, founded by Solomon and Gustav Gump in 1861. The Mark Hopkins was named for a man who became inordinately rich owning part of the Central Pacific Railroad, which joined the Union Pacific to form the first transcontinental route, completed in 1869. In the Top of the Mark, the bar on the top floor of the hotel, I find a little-known picture by landscape photographer Ansel Adams. Taken in 1938, it shows a woman in a pillbox hat drinking a martini.