San Francisco, California, United States of America (2025)

Posted on January 13, 2025 by richardcedwards

San Francisco, California, U.S.A, photograph # 1 – the iconic symbol of San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, opened in 1937, is celebrated for its beauty, charm and Art Deco design elements; experts long said that it would be impossible to construct a bridge spanning the 6,700 foot [2,042 meters] Golden Gate Strait due to the blinding fog and ferocious winds

When we woke up in our apartment overlooking Lake Merritt in Oakland, CA, USA, to get ready to go across the San Francisco—Oakland Bay Bridge to Pier 35 to embark on our residential apartment ship, arriving that morning from Cabo San Lucas, Baja California, Mexico, we thought something was strange. All we could see out our windows was whiteness. This was the heaviest winter fog we have ever encountered in over 5 decades of living in the San Francisco Bay Area. That raised the worrisome question, could the ship get through the Golden Gate Strait (under the Golden Gate Bridge) and, with radar, “feel” its way to the dock at Pier 35? It turns out that was the same question the San Francisco Bay pilot was asking himself in the early morning hours as he boarded the ship and worked on our ship’s bridge with our very experienced captain to assess the situation. They decided to “go” for it. It was later, after they successfully docked, that the captain personally told us that the pilot said that was the thickest (least visibility) fog on the Bay that he had guided a ship to a pier in this career in San Francisco. We were all thrilled that our itinerary was intact and on schedule…. And, of course, it is the City’s beloved fog that has given the city its epithet: the “cool grey city of love”.

San Francisco is known for many things – the city of seven hills; the city that is seven by seven miles square miles in size; the “City by the Bay”; the launching pad for the United Nations (the treaty was signed there in 1945), the “City of Love” for the hippies and Haight–Ashbury neighborhood in 1967; the city of gay pride, with the first elected gay mayor in the U.S. (Harvey Milk, assassinated while in office and now memorialized at the San Francisco International Airport with one of the terminals named after him); world-class colleges and universities and medical/biotech research and companies; the headquarters of many high tech companies and now AI companies; great cafés, bars, and restaurants; outstanding cultural attractions (arts, music, dance, opera, museums, etc.); college and professional sports; and, more recently: too many homeless people sleeping on the streets, much petty crime, countless car window smash-ins, and many drug deals going on in the downtown district. This week a new mayor was sworn in, so locals are hopeful that change is coming…

San Francisco, California, U.S.A, photograph # 2 – a view of the Golden Gate Bridge from the veranda of our apartment on our ship (“our home at sea”), with the sailboat marina at Pier 39 in the foreground, adjacent to our berth at Pier 35

“San Francisco holds a secure place in the United States’ romantic dream of itself—a cool, elegant, handsome, worldly seaport whose steep streets offer breathtaking views of one of the world’s greatest bays. According to the dream, San Franciscans are sophisticates whose lives hold full measures of such civilized pleasures as music, art, and good food. Their children are to be pitied, for, as the wife of publishing magnate Nelson Doubleday once said, “They will probably grow up thinking all cities are so wonderful.” To San Franciscans their city is a magical place, almost an island, saved by its location and history from the sprawl and monotony that afflicts so much of urban California.

“Since World War II, however, San Francisco has had to face the stark realities of urban life: congestion, air and water pollution, violence and vandalism, and the general decay of the inner city. San Francisco’s makeup has been changing as families, mainly white and middle-class, have moved to its suburbs, leaving the city to a population that, viewed statistically, tends to be older and to have fewer married people. Now more than one of every two San Franciscans is “nonwhite”—in this case African American, East Asian, Filipino, Samoan, Vietnamese, Latin American, or Native American. Their dreams increasingly demand a realization that has little to do with the romantic dream of San Francisco. But both the dreams and the realities are important, for they are interwoven in the fabric of the city that might be called Paradox-by-the-Bay.

“Although San Franciscans complain of the congestion, homelessness, and high cost of living that plague the city and talk endlessly of the good old days, the majority still think of San Francisco the way poet George Sterling did, as “the cool grey city of love,” one of America’s most attractive, colourful, and distinctive places to live.” — www.britannica.com/place/San-Francisco-California

San Francisco, California, U.S.A, photograph # 3 – Alcatraz Island (a natural island), former home of the infamous United States federal prison

“Alcatraz (Spanish: “Pelican”) was from 1934 to 1963 the most notorious maximum-security, “escape-proof” prison in the United States. In 1969, after the decaying cell blocks had been given up by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a multi-tribal group of Native Americans invaded the island and asserted their rights to abandoned federal property, but they were forcibly evicted in 1971. The island became part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area in 1972 and has become a popular tourist attraction.” — www.britannica.com/place/San-Francisco-California

San Francisco, California, U.S.A, photograph # 4 – the high rise building on Treasure Island, in San Francisco Bay between S.F. and Berkeley, is a new apartment building, part of the conversion of the former United States Naval Base operational from World War II to three decades ago (1941-1993) into a residential work/live community; Treasure Island is land fill connected to the Bay’s other natural island, Yerba Buena (through which the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge passes)

San Francisco, California, U.S.A, photograph # 5 — the world’s longest high-level steel bridge, the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, is 4.5 miles [7.2 kilometers] long; it was completed in 1936 – a year before the Golden Gate Bridge! — and consists of two back-to-back suspension bridges, a connecting tunnel on Yerba Buena Island, five truss spans, and a cantilever span.

San Francisco, California, U.S.A, photograph # 6 – an alternative to Uber and Lyft summoned drive apps (on iPhones and Android phones), Waymo is a ROBOTIC DRIVERLESS drive service, developed and owned by a subsidiary of “Google” (Alphabet Inc.); it is now one of the most popular tourist “attractions” in San Francisco

“Waymo LLC, formerly known as the Google Self-Driving Car Project, is an American autonomous driving technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc…. In fall 2015, Google provided ‘the world’s first fully driverless ride on public roads’. In December 2016, the project was renamed Waymo and spun out of Google as part of Alphabet. In October 2020, Waymo became the first company to offer service to the public without safety drivers in the vehicle. Waymo, as of 2024, operates commercial robotaxi services in Phoenix (Arizona), San Francisco (California), and Los Angeles (California)^, with new services planned in Austin, Texas, Miami, Florida, and Tokyo, Japan. As of October 2024, it offers 150,000 paid rides per week totaling over 1 million miles weekly.” — Wikipedia

San Francisco, California, U.S.A, photograph # 7 – the “Intrepid Traveler” getting out of our Waymo Jaguar car (no driver to tip!) at the entrance to Chinatown on Grant Street (at Bush Street); we were very comfortable during our 15 minute drive and felt completely safe

San Francisco, California, U.S.A, photograph # 8 – Coit (Memorial) Tower on Telegraph Hill, above the Italian community and neighborhood of North Beach, was built from 1932 -1934 in the Art Deco style with funds from Lillie Hitchcock Coit, nicknamed “Firebelle Lil” due to her deep fascination with and appreciation for firefighters — to memorialize all the volunteer firefighters who lost their lives in San Francisco’s five fires

San Francisco, California, U.S.A, photograph # 9 — Saints Peter and Paul Church is a Catholic church in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, located directly across from Washington Square Park (where the photograph was madeI) and is administered by the Salesians of Don Bosco; it is known as “la cattedrale italiana dell’Ovest”, or the Italian Cathedral of the West (the use of the word “Cathedral” is merely colloquial, not an official designation), and has served as the home church and cultural center for San Francisco’s Italian-American community since its consecration in 1884

Decades after first being envisioned by railroad magnate Charles Crocker, the US$35 million [Golden Gate] bridge construction project began on January 5, 1933. Painted “international orange” to complement its natural surroundings and enhance its visibility in the fog, the Golden Gate Bridge, at 4,200 feet [1,280 meters], was the longest suspension bridge in the world until 1964. More information about the history and construction of the bridge can be found at the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway & Transportation District’s website, www.goldengate.org

San Francisco, California, U.S.A, photograph # 10 – the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset, the evening we sailed under the bridge (in the dark) as we headed south to our next California port-of-call, Santa Barbara

Panapompom Island, Deboyne Islands, Papua New Guinea

Posted on September 23, 2024 by richardcedwards

From the Conflict Islands Group, we sailed about 50 nautical miles east to Panapompom Island, one of the Deboyne Islands, an atoll, composed of a group of reefs and islands in the north of the Louisiade Archipelago, Papua New Guinea — east of the southeastern tip of the island of New Guinea. “The Deboyne Islands were discovered in 1793 by Antoine Bruni d’Entrecasteaux. He named the islands after Pierre Ètienne Bourgeois de Boynes, who was the Marine and Colonial Minister of France at that time. During World War II, the islands were used as a seaplane outpost by the Imperial Japanese Navy, from 5–12 May 1942.” – Wikipedia

Our first photograph shows a very typical Papua New Guinean sailing canoe, a Sailau, based on the original Pacific Islanders’ sailing canoes. “Sailaus, as sailing canoes are called in Misima, the common language of these islands, are hand hewn wooden outrigger canoes with one mast. Sails are suspended between a yard and a boom almost the length of the mast. They are made of nylon, plastic or canvas tarpaulins, or bits of rice bags sewn together. Often, they are a combination of materials.” — http://www.tenayatravels.com/

Panapompom Island, Deboyne Islands, Papua New Guinea (PNG), photograph # 2 — at the small village of Nulia (population of several hundred), we were very enthusiastically met by the cheerful residents who were dancers and singers in the local traditional dances and sing-sing groups

Midday, on our arrival ashore (a Zodiac wet beach landing) at the small village of Nulia (population of several hundred), we were very enthusiastically met by the cheerful residents. We found out that we were the first ship to visit the island in over five years! Some of our greeters and the dancers and singers in the local traditional dances and sing-sing groups had traveled to this side of the island from the northern, more populated side. This was a school holiday, so the children were all around and gave especially warm and friendly greetings. We were accompanied and “guided” across the long shore walk to the construction site of a new ocean-going outrigger canoe by two lovely high-school age girls from the village. The Intrepid Traveler thanked them by opening up the I.E. Nail Salon at the landing site and doing manicures (pink and bright red were the “customer” chosen colors of the day). Mid-afternoon there was a series of games on the large field by the landing spot for the local children to compete with the few children on board and some of the “young-at-heart” Residents and their guests.

Just before sunset we took Zodiacs to the nearby Nivani Island (uninhabited) where we had “almost the end of the expedition” sunset cocktails ashore and watched a large bonfire on the beach in celebration of a wonderful three weeks in Melanesia.