A view down Grant Street, the main drag of Chinatown.  Vibrant and large, when walking the streets of Chinatown you really do feel as though you are in a foreign country.

Signs, whether for the streets or McDonalds, often are bilingual.

Our favorite meal was at the House of Nanking, in Chinatown and recommended by our friends Mike and Linda.  The food was great, and the place, packed with people and food, was also full of character.  Definitely not the typical Chinese restaurant.

One day we walked and walked, much of it in the rain, taking in the diverse neighborhoods of the city.  Here, in the Fillmore district, are some of the beautiful Victorian homes that can be found throughout San Francisco.

We also walked through the Lower Haight and Upper Haight, an area sometimes referred to generally as Haight-Ashbury, the intersection of two streets which served as ground zero for the 60's revolution of free love, drugs, rock and roll, etc.  Now Haight is lined with shops, cafes, and restaurants, together with homeless, addicts of various sorts, and other shiftless drifters.  All of the above give it a distinct and pleasing atmosphere.

Of course, a cable car, the trademark of San Francisco.

The view from a cable car, looking down California Street at yet another cable car and the Bay Bridge below.

At the Cable Car Barn, which doubles as a museum, the cables which run beneath the city streets, giving cable cars both their name and their means of locomotion, are run though "sheaves."  Cable cars do not have motors or independent power.  Instead, they move through the streets by gripping the cables which are constantly moving (always at 9.5 miles per hour) beneath the streets.  When it is time to stop, the cable is released and brakes applied.  The principal is not much different from a tow rope at a ski resort.

The "winding machinery" through which all of the city's cables, for each of the 3 lines, run.

The Gripman, or driver.  So named because, with the large levers in front of him, he controls the cable car by "gripping" and releasing the cable which runs below the street.  As we watched on a particularly rainy day, on hills with extreme pitches, it looked pretty tough.

The Powell Street line, heading toward Union Square.

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