Presidio

Today, I decided to walk around the Presidio, part of the Golden Gate Recreation Area.  On a map it looks similar to any other parkland area.  It has a number of trails that you can follow through the area, criss-crossing the entire region.

However, it's a bit more strange than that.  It was quite easy to get to because one of the buses that passes near my hotel has been extended recently to go right to the eastern section, terminating at the grandly named "Presidio Transit Center" - which is really just a layby with a couple of bus shelters.

It was all rather odd, though.  When I went in, past the welcome sign, it was more like an abandonned industrial estate, with lots of fences and boarded up windows.  However, after making my way through that maze of buildings, I found the more active areas.  It seems that there is a lot of office space at the eastern side, with the western side being more of the nature that I thought was going to be everywhere.

There are a number of statues in the area, including to Americans who "invented" television, after Baird had demonstrated it and cinema, quite a while after the Lumiere brothers demonstrated it(!)  However, the statue that most people take photographs of is this one of Yoda, outside the main Lucasfilm office.  They have several large offices here, where the work on Star Wars was done.

There was a such a procession of people, that everybody was taking pictures for the next person to make sure everybody got a good shot.

The area was a military base in decades past, which accounts for the way all the buildings were arranged into the central part, with the old barracks just built in a line.  They now house different museums or businesses.

There was also a lot of food vans in the car parking area, plus in the visitor centre just to the right of the picture.  I decided to walk up to Inspiration Point at the top of the hill, which was further than I thought it was going to be.  The views were worth it, though.  Even better, there's a half hourly free shuttle bus that does the rounds of the Presidio and one of its stops is at Inspiration Point, so I was able to take it down to the south-west corner and then take a normal bus back to the city.

I had dinner at the Franciscan Crab restaurant, which was lovely and has a view over the bay.  Unfortunately, paying was an issue, as they couldn't get their machines to accept my credit card.  This has not been a problem anywhere else.  I did wonder if it was because I had used the card so many times without entering a PIN, but I had used one fairly recently.  In the end, they did it with a paper photocopy of ID and card.  It's all very strange, as the purchase was there in my pending transactions.  So I need to keep an eye on it to make sure that only one transaction ever gets confirmed.