north america

In the background the Bay Bridge can be seen with the lights of Oakland and the dark patch of the Yerba Buena Island.Picture of the Transamerica Pyramid through the window of Coit TowerThe private social club is located at the top of Nob Hill and it was founded in 1889. This was one of the few structures to survive the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906.Moses receives the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai.People are gazing the Tree of Hope and listening the jazz tunes. The floor made out of Tennessee pink marble, the walls are made of Colorado limestone.If you fold 1,000 cranes, Japanese legend says, you're granted a wish.Crossing the Sierra; relief on the Pioneer Monument with a touch of 'modern art'.Sculptor: Frank Happersberger. Dedicated to the City of San Francisco in 1894. The monument was a gift of philanthropist James Lick, who died in 1876, left $100,000 to the City for the creation of Western gulls.Castilleja latifoliaLooking southeast from Weston Beach in the morning.The central rotunda, surrounded by the lagoon.With the temporary skating rink and the huge christmas tree - and with part of the Dewey Column and the famous Westin St. Francis Hotel in the background.Chinatown treasures in the shop named 'Michael' at the Dragon Gate.Chinatown treasures in the shop named 'Michael' at the Dragon Gate.The sculpture, which is a a 40-foot high geodesic sphere, stands in the Hyatt Regency's atrium lobby. The lobby itself is also famous for its architecture, designed by John Portman: each successive floor streches further and further into the atrium. This makes the upper floors look like they are just floating over the atrium without any support. It's similar to the interior of the Hotel Luxor (a pyramid) in Las Vegas.The skyscrapers of the Embarcadero Center in the background.Mohandas K. Ghandi lived beetween October 2, 1869 - January 30, 1948. The stairs have wonderful views of San Francisco and feature well tended gardens and art deco buildings on either side along the way.At the bottom of the Filbert Steps.The Transamerica Pyramid is the tallest skyscraper in the San Francisco skyline with its 260 m (850 ft) hieght. It contains 48 floors and was built between 1969 and 1972. This building was the headquarters of the Transamerica Corporation wich is now a subsidiary holding company of AEGON. But Transamerica was founded by that A. P. Gianni in 1930 who had also been the head of Bank of Italy which became later the Bank of America.The parallels are the Filbert and the Greenwich streets, which run through San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood with the Saints Peter and Paul Church in the center.As seen from the Telegraph Hill in the late afternoon.Located at 666 Filbert Street… :)The most populous city named after Saint Francis of Assisi is San Francisco.There are more than 600 murals in San Francisco! This one can be found at the intersection of Grant Ave and Broadway.The picture was taken at the intersection of Mason and California Street. The huge height differences and the steepness of the streets are just amazing.The dome atop San Fransisco's City Hall that was completed in 1896 supported a twenty-foot statue, The Goddess of Progress. The statue was so securely mounted that on April 18, 1906, when the City Hall and the city around it lay in ruins from the great earthquake-fire, it continued to stand at the peak of the now-exposed steel tower. After workmen brought it down, the statue fell from a wagon and the 700-pound head broke off.Mayor Jim Rolph was the visionary who insisted that the City of San Francisco build this magnificent structure.The floor of the elevators is wood, inlaid with brass, and features the official monogram of San Francisco.George R. Moscone was the Mayor of the city beetween 1976-1968. The structure's beautiful dome is the fifth largest in the world, even higher than the United States Capitol.The Ceremonial Rotunda, where the wedding of Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio was performed.The Tree of Hope has thousands of origami paper cranes bearing wishes from around the world, from the likes of President Obama and Jane Goodall to anonymous schoolkids.I wish people would stop killing other peoples' families. That's not right for the other family!Ok, we didn't find Obama's wish, but this one is just :D My wish for the world is that we would stop raising too many cows because their farts make green house gasses.Christmas spirit with a small jazz band… in San Francisco style.The statue of Ashurbanipal faces the San Francisco Library. He was an Assyrian king, who established the first systematically organized library in the ancient Middle East, the Library of Ashurbanipal, which survives in part today at Nineveh.Sculpture of the Pioneer Monument. After the discovery of gold near Sacramento in 1848, an epic gold rush sees 60,000 'forty-niners' flock to California's Mother Lode.Black-tailed Mule DeerBlack-tailed Mule DeerThe smart black-and-white head makes them easy to identify. They hop across the ground and through low foliage in brushy habitats. Alaskan white-crowned sparrows migrate about 2,600 miles to winter in Southern California.The orange, velvety stuff on the tree is green algae. Its orange color comes from carotene, a pigment which also occurs in carrots. The plant does not harm the trees.A.M. Allan and his wife were the owners of Point Lobos whose foresight and decades-long work led to its protection and in 1933 it became part of the new state park system.Western gull.A smile and a wink for the tourists.Castilleja latifoliaIn fact, the gray stringy thing which hangs from the tree is not a Halloween decoration; it is called Lace Lichen and grows where the climate is cool and humid and where there is little sun. Lace Lichen does not harm the trees; it is found on the branches that have already died from lack of sunlight. A lichen is combination of a fungus and a green alga. Deer like to eat this lichen, and birds carry it off for nesting materials.… as seen from Twin Peaks. The bright strip in the middle is Market Street.The structure features seven-foot-thick walls and multi tiered constrution.Is our piano there? :)On the left, beneath the southern side of the bridge Fort Point can be seen. First, Spain built a Cable cars were invented in 1873 by Andrew Hallidie to climb the hills of San Francisco. Many cities once had cable cars, but today, San Francisco's 3 lines are the only ones left in the world. The single-ended Powell Street cars are the older of the two types now in service. The Powell cars have one open grip end and can be turned only with the help of the turntables built into the street at the ends of the lines.The red arch was built on a hinged building surface. Once the blocks were correctly positioned over an outline of the arch, we lifted the wooden platform to bring the blocks to a vertical position. Then we lowered the backboard, leaving the arch free-standing. The shape the arch takes is called a catenary. The catenary is the curve that an idealized hanging cable or chain with very short links assumes under its own weight when supported only at its ends.Hands-on exhibits explore biology, physics, listening, cognition, and visual perception in the Exploratorium. You can really touch and try everything.The Palace of Fine Arts is a grandiose building wich was originally constructed for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition. This is the only structure of the few surviving ones which is still situated on its original site. The Palace intended to stand only for the duration of the Exhibition. Although it hadn't been built of durable materials, it was so beloved that it was saved from demolition. After years of various uses, in 1964 the building was reconstructed in permanent materials. Still in that decade it became home to the Exploratorium (an interactive museum) and the Palace of Fine Arts Theater.Around the rotunda rows of Corinthian columns frame the walkway.This steep, one-block section of the Lombard Street consists of eight tight hairpin turns, wich make it one of the crookedest streets in the world.Near PF Chang's China BistroSculpture by Gene Flores…otherwise this is the equestrian statue of Simon Bolivar near the Civic Center. He was a Venezuelan military and political leader, who played a key role in Hispanic-Spahish America's successful struggle for independence from the Spanish Empire.Chinatown treasures in the shop named 'Michael' at the Dragon Gate.… as viewed from the California Street. The cap is indirectly illuminated from within.Unfortunatelly less fascinating than the bushy part, it is concrete and steel.is a 64 m (210 ft) tall tower at the top of the Telegraph Hill. The art deco tower was built in 1933 at the request of Lillie Hitchcock Coit to beautify the city of San Francisco. She was a well-known volunteer firefighter and an eccentric character of her time. Despite of her special intrest and relationship with firefighting, the tower was allegedly not designed to resemble a fire hose nozzle… :)Cristoforo Colombo was born in 1451 in Genoa which is part of the present-day Italy. Although he wasn't the first explorer to reach the Americas, his four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to the first lasting European contact with the With the statue of Columbus in the center.This is a Roman Chatolic Church in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood, which is known as With the Golden Gate Bridge in the background, looking from Coit Tower.The Yerba Buena Island lays in the San Francisco Bay between San Francisco and Oakland. The eastern and western spans of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge are connected through the island's tunnel. The island was named after the aromatic herb, yerba buena (means is an artificial island in the San Francisco Bay, connected to Yerba Buean Island. It was created for the Golden Gate International Exposition (1939), and it is named after the novel Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson, who lived in San Francisco from 1879 to 1880.Looks like there is a gulch on the other side of California Street - but it's just the steep Jones Street.The exit from the interior of the building is through the windows. The ladder from the lowest level of the fire escape to the ground is folded up to prevent persons (such as burglars) from accessing the fire escape from the ground.An original vault used for the Treasury of the City and County of San Francisco.The design of the Civic Center was the city's architectural expression of its grandeur, vitality and international importance.The figure of Eureka at the top of the Pioneer Monument, with 'forty-niners' in the foreground.Statue of Plenty Part of the Pioneer Monument with a disrespectful gullThey are pretty noisy. Adult males can attain a length over 8 feet and weigh up to 800 pounds.Black-tailed Mule DeerBlack-tailed Mule DeersBlack-tailed Mule DeerBlack-tailed Mule DeersIt is also the earlier Spanish name of Point Lobos, which translates to Those little spots at the top of the cliff are California Sea Lions.With the Sea Lion Point in the background.Harbor Seals are smaller than sea lions and look like swollen cigars. Unlike sea lions, their ears are not visible, and the short rear flippers, which point away from the body, are unsuited for moving about on land. They are usually silent, and love to bask on rocks just above the water.Slatebacked western gulls.As seen from Point Lobos.As seen from Cannery PointSea otters eat and sleep in this position and seldom come ashore.These cypresses, which formerly extended over a much wider range, withdrew to these fog-shrouded headlands as the climate changed with the close of the Pleistocene epoch 15,000 years ago. The trees mirror the forces of nature and time; they survive the salt spray and wind, with their roots seeking nourishment in cracks and crevices.Looking south from Weston Beach in the morning.Rosa Eglanteria… as seen from Twin Peaks.The Golden Gate Bridge's paint color is orange vermillion, also called international orange (CYMK 0%, 69%, 100%, 6%). Architect Irving Morrow selected the distinctive orange color because it blends well with the span's natural setting and it also provides enhanced visibility for passing ships. The term Golden Gate refers to the Golden Gate Strait which is the entrance to the San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean, and not related with the color of the bridge.As seen from Fort Point. On the picture one can find the dome of the Palace of Fine Arts, the pinnacle of the Transamerica Pyramid, the Coit Tower and the pillars of the Bay Bridge.The Golden Gate Bridge was the longest span in the world from its completion in 1937 until 1964. Today, it still has the ninth-longest suspension span in the world.… from Marina Green.Balclutha is a three-masted, steel-hulled, square-rigged ship built to carry a variety of cargo all over the world. It was launched in 1886.There are a lot of various street artists around the Fisherman's Wharf.This cable car turntable is at the Hyde St - Beach St intersection. The long queue of people consists of tourists who want to ride the cable car. The two Powell Street lines (Powell-Hyde & Powell-Mason) use cable cars that are operable from only one end. They thus require turntables to reverse direction at the ends of the line. Mrs. Friedel Klussmann, the Cable Car Lady, led the campaign that saved the San Francisco cable cars in the late 1940's.The Exploratorium is a museum of science, art, and human perception in San Francisco. It is similar to the Hungarian 'Palace of Miracles' (Csodák Palotája), just about five-times larger. It was founded in 1969 by physicist and educator Frank Oppenheimer, who was the younger brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer, often called the Atop the colonnade there are weeping women in every corner.Frieze sculpture at the top of the rotunda, inspired by the Greek culture.After the windy part, the Lombard Street continues through the Telegraph Hill neighborhood, until it becomes Telegraph Hill Boulevard, where vehicles can access the Coit Tower. Funny, that behind the hill Lombard Street starts again for 2 blocks and finally terminates at The Embarcadero.The switchback's design was born out of necessity in order to reduce the hill's natural 27% grade, which was too steep for most vehicles to climb. The speed limit in this section is 5 mph (8 km/h).Mission Street is really impressive… but tiresome on hot daysEspecially on a hot summer day.