San Francisco - the first impressions

I have to say San Francisco is not a typical North American city. San Francisco is neat, clean, not to crowded, has many quality restaurants and bars and a pretty decent public transit system, and all this in addition to a wide range of attractions.

Once you’ve landed at the San Francisco international airport, it’s very easy to get to the city. If you choose to get a taxi cab, it will cost you about 45 US dollars to get from the airport to the financial district in down town San Francisco and under normal traffic conditions it takes about 25 minutes. You can also use the public transit system. The BART train connects the airport to many important locations in the city of San Francisco and the Bay Area.

One of the first things that strikes you when you start moving around in San Francisco is it’s clean public transit system. There are very few gas powered vehicles. You’ll see many electric street cars and trolley buses, a few hybrid buses, the legendary San Francisco Cable Cars and very few gas powered buses. San Francisco’s municipal transportation system is called MUNI. As a visitor, you can get a pas for one week which costs 25 US dollars.

With its original architecture and its steep streets, the city is an attraction by itself. Visitors can enjoy the Golden Gate Park, the coloured Haight Street, Ocean Beach, Fishermans Wharf and many other.

The city offers many quality restaurants and bars and unlike other places in North America, you can really notice a general effort to serve healthy, quality food. The service is always excellent. The only thing that bugs me is that it’s almost impossible to get your coffee served in anything other than a paper cup. I mean, how hard can it be to have a few glass or china cups ready for customers willing to sit down and drink their coffee in the shop? But that ’s a general issue in the US. Otherwise, San Francisco coffee shops make very good espresso.

If you’re in a shopping mood, then Market Street is the place you should go. With huge department stores such as Macy’s and Bloomingdale and a wide range of nice smaller shops any shopper can only be satisfied. At the time of this writing, shopping on Market Street is very appealing to Europeans, given the very strong Euro. If that’s not enough for you, many department store offer special visitor discounts.

Overall San Francisco is a very pleasant city and I can only recommend spending few days there if you’re planing a vacation to California.

With Air France to San Francisco

We used Air France to fly from Paris to San Francisco.

I was really impressed with the quality of the service Air France is providing both on the ground and in-flight. Two meals are served during the flight. The food is quite nice - among the best I’ve ever got on a plane - and champaign is on the house. There is also an open bar with refreshment drinks and small sandwiches, in case you feel like having a snack at mid-flight. The personnel is very helpful and friendly.

Economy class seats, however, aren’t very comfortable and after a 12 hours flight you actually start feeling that. The entertainment system leaves much to be desired - the image on the small screens on the back of the seats is average and the sound is of very bad quality. On the good side of things, they provide a nice selection of movies, cartoons, documentaries and TV series.

Overall, I think Air France provides a fair service for your money and would highly recommend them for long flights such as Paris to San Francisco.

Business Trip to San Francisco and New York

I’m right in the middle of a job switch and in order to get to know the new company and the development team in the US I’ll have to take a business trip to California and New York. I’m going to spend 9 days in San Francisco and 3 days in New York and I will keep a full travel log with pictures and reviews.

So if you’re interested to see how that goes, come back on december 1^st and stay tuned.