Winter Break in San Francisco

Golden Gate Bridge: one of the most recognizable bridge in the world

Finally, I got a chance to visit one of the most famous landmark in the United States; The Golden Gate Bridge. There are many films and TV shows that often shoots near the bridge. Even though I didn't have a chance to visit the exact place, it still looks really cool. However, San Francisco has much more to often than just one big red bridge. 

In fact, the Golden Gate bridge is not even the longest bridge in San Francisco. Bay Bridge is in fact much longer and more important bridge since it connects San Francisco and Berkeley. It also connects to Treasure Island in the middle of the bay. (If you are from UChicago, you get the joke)

Bay Bridge; the longest bridge in San Francisco

And two more unexpected things that I saw during this visit apart from all good food that are available everywhere in San Francisco and the weather which is way too nice to be true are "Cable Car Museum" and "Pier 39." I found cable cars fascinating and always wonder how it actually works, and this museum provides me with the history and the mechanism of cable cars itself. The one fact that blew my mind is that a cable car has a gripper underneath the street that catch the cable which is always moving. The car itself does not has any source of power and it only used the friction between the gripper and cables to move the car to the entire city. Also San Francisco is the first city that developed such a technology due to the difficulty of using horse power to move cars up and down hills that are presented everywhere in the city. We can say that just because of this difficult geography, San Francisco developed one of the most important public transportations in the world.

Cable Car Museum: In front of one of cable cars

The last fascinating place in San Francisco that I believe you all should visit is Pier 39. Since I am from Chicago, I expected Pier 39 to be similar to Navy Pier in downtown of Chicago. In some senses, they are similar. Both of them have many tiny shops for kids to visit and enjoy the pier and a big christmas tree during the holiday. But the one thing that I did not expect from the pier is hundreds of sea lion sleeping near the pier. No sea lion seems to fear all humans who try to get a good photo of them. Flashing of cameras and all the noise from visitors does not seem to bother them at all. They still lie down on the pier as if there is nothing else better to do than sleeping until you wonder what it would be like to be a sea lion who simply sleep and enjoy themselves here.

Pier 39: Hundreds of Sea Lions near the pier