An English country girl in California: Farewell to San Francisco

Tall trees and sun-bleached rocks are drifting past my window, giving way to views of the vast forests and mountains of the Sierra Nevadas. I am aboard the California Zephyr, the Amtrak sleeper train that winds its way from San Francisco to Chicago, en route to Denver, Colorado, and the Wyoming ranch where I will spend the next two months. My last day in San Francisco was sunny and benign, the early morning fog burning off to reveal blue skies and bright sunshine, as if the city were urging me to stay. It need not fear, I will return, to climb the streets and sail the Bay, feast on clam chowder and brace against the Pacific winds.

I will miss the views, the sea and the myriad things to do, but also the ordinary, everyday things that remind me of the Californian friendliness and relaxed attitude to life. The way people say ‘bless you’ if you sneeze on the bus, the understanding servers in Ghirardelli who don't mind that you take half an hour to choose your ice-cream sundae, the water bowls set out for dogs on the streets outside shops and the signs on the rattling Muni buses that temper the inevitable health and safety with cheerfulness and good sense: ‘Information gladly given but safety requires avoiding unnecessary conversation.’ The excitement and exasperation of the America’s Cup – my one regret about leaving now is that I won’t see the main competition in September – and the glimpses of the giant AC72s practicing on the Bay. The vivid pinks and reds of the flowers that festoon the old Victorian houses, the tiny streets hidden away on Telegraph Hill and in Haight Ashbury and the gilded plasterwork that gleams on every available frieze and portico. The clatter of the cable cars, the wailing of the fire engines, the boom of the fog horn and the chiming of the Ferry Building clock that echoes the notes of Big Ben in London. The tall glass skyscrapers of the Financial District, the towers of Grace Cathedral rising above Huntington Square and the parks that crown the many hills, from the ‘boutique wilderness’ of Buena Vista to the newly manicured lawns of Lafayette. But most of all, I’ll miss the people. In just over two months, I have made friends for life, canine and human, and I can’t wait to come back and see them all again.

Vikram Seth tells it true when he writes in his beguiling novel-in-verse The Golden Gate that San Francisco is:

The loveliest city in the world.
No veiling words suffice to praise it,
But if you saw it as, light-pearled,
Fog-fingered, pinnacled, I see it
Across the black tide, you'd agree it
Outvied the magic of your own.

Here are a few of my favourite things: