California

1999

Every town along the coast has its franciscan mission. The inner garden of the mission is usually full of flowers. The missions formed the core of the later towns even for the big ones as LA. Most of them are museums but in some there are still monks and used as schools.
Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills, LA. For some stores you have to have an appointment. No price tags at all. More Rolls-Royces in five minutes that I've seen all in my life.
Those fabulous beaches. This one is Laguna Beach with the waves. Of course there are flowers, flowers and flowers everywhere..
Sunset in the beach. As soon as the sun is gone it's cold. On the restaurants' patios there are gas heaters for the tourists wearing shorts and freezing to death. Attention! This is California!
This Spanish Baroque "cathedral" is the Hearst Castle. The buildings were created from several geographically and historically different styles. The Gothic church that is a dining room with Flamish tapestry and with Persian mosaics over the Gothic windows and arches is a little bit strange but very tastefully presented.
The outside pool in Roman style. The pool was heated back then.
The mountains in the background are parts of Big Sur.
San Francisco with the old houses of the Alamo Square. SF with its hilly streets is very different from the customary American city. On the first day we were walking in downtown. Even the smaller distances turned out as surpisingly tiring because there are no signs inclines on the map. Fortunatelly, there's always a breeze from the ocean but you better have a sweatshirt in SF.
The concrete pyramid of Transamerica and the iron-building from the Italian quarter. Lots of small cafeterias are in the Italian part, a million restaurants in the Chinese, super sushi in the Japanese. The Latin part is famous about the "different" people who live there. We haven't seen anything offensive though.
The Golden Gate bridge. Very long, very tall, very red. On its other end there is Sausalito with the villas and yachts of millionaires who fled SF.

We were really lucky with the weather. The Bay was always clear and the clouds came in only on the last day but then it was so bad we hardly found the bridge on the way back.