san francisco
Outdoor Adventures to Try: Kayaking San Francisco Bay
San Francisco is our home and has been the home of both sides of the family since 1851 when Captain James H. Blethen, our great-great Grandfather sailed into San Francisco Bay on a Vanderbilt steamship which he sailed around the Horn.
Even though we have travelled the world, and are intrigued or charmed by cities on every part of the globe, San Francisco draws us back. There is truly nothing like this City by the Bay.
It has world-class everything: theatre, opera, ballet, shopping, restaurants (with fresh seafood caught along California's coastline), waters superb for all manner of water sports: sailing, motoring, surfing, tremendous kayaking, rowing, etc. It also has the 80,000 acre Golden Gate National Recreation area, which is twice the size of San Francisco itself. Across the Bay in Marin rises Mt. Tamalpais, home of world class Mountain Biking. Gary Fisher developed his famous Fisher Mountain Bike in Fairfax, which is about 25 miles north of San Francisco and sits at the base of some of world's finest mountain biking trails up the mountain. There is so much open land in Marin that it is possible to get up on the ridge and ride all the way to the Pacific Ocean without encountering anyone else.
Along with New York, Brisbane (Australia), London, Oxford (England), Paris, Nice, Rome, Tokyo and Kyoto, San Francisco is one of the greatest walking cities in the world. Because of its condensed size, it is possible to walk across the City along Mission Street from Daly City to the Bay in one day. Or from Ocean Beach to downtown San Francisco following Golden Gate Park and the Panhandle in one day.
Along these routes, you will see a variety of neighborhoods, architecture and various ethnic groups that have settled in the neighborhoods since the Gold Rush. Most areas have changed dramatically, but still hold vestiges of the cultures that lived there. The Mission was at one time greatly Irish; it is now home to the city's growing Hispanic population, but it has also opened up to artists in the past ten years or so because of its somewhat lower rents, lofts and available warehouse spaces. Many Russian immigrants quietly lived in the 
Outer Richmond for decades . . . the elegant Russian Orthodox Church at 6210 Geary Street is well worth a visit. The Italians established themselves in North Beach and still have many restaurants and shops along Columbus.
One of our favorite walks growing up started at Mission Street near Daly City and ended at Fisherman's Wharf (about 12 miles away). We followed Mission for about 7 miles to 5th and Mission (location of The San Francisco Chronicle newspaper building). At that time, the area near Daly City was inhabited by San Francisco's Italian families, and the middle of the Mission District was home to thousands of the City's Hispanic families. The center of Mission was "discovered" by artists because rents were somewhat lower and the weather is among the best in the City. While fog swirls through the outer Sunset and Richmond districts, the Mission denizens bathe in the warmth of sunlight.
From 5th and Mission, we walked over to Grant Avenue, which stretches from Market Street and runs north east through some of San Francisco's finest shops (including fine boutique shops on Maiden Lane), through Chinatown—San Francisco's Chinatown is the largest in the world outside of China—then through North Beach, originally setteld by Italians who retain their culture with great restaurants and coffeeshops and restaurants with outside seating on warmer days, then to Ghirardelli Square and Fisherman's Wharf.
We "window shopped" throughout, of course, and talked about whatever books we were reading at the time. When we were younger, we didn't have funds to eat in any of the fine restaurants on Fisherman's Wharf. So we hopping a cable car back to Market Street and transferred to a Mission Street bus to return to our starting point.
Now that we have funds, whenever we have time we dine at McCormick & Kuleto Seafood Restaurant in Ghirardelli Square. It is a fine restaurant, excellent service (even when it's very crowded during the summer months), great wine list, wonderful French bread, fish from around the world, lovely ambiance, and sublime views of the Bay.
Reading departure signs in some big airport