San Francicso - Baghdad by the Bay

"When I was a child growing up in Salinas we called San Francisco 'The City.' Of course it was the only city we knew, but I still think of it as the City and so does everyone else who has ever associated with it... San Francisco put on a show for me. I saw her across the bay from the great road that bypasses Sausalito and enters the Golden Gate Bridge. The afternoon sun painted her white and gold -- rising on her hills like a noble city in a happy dream... New York makes its own hills with craning buildings, but this gold and white acropolis rising wave on wave against the blue of the Pacific sky was a stunning thing, a painted thing like a picture of a medieval Italian city which can never have existed. I stopped in a parking place to look at her and the necklace bridge over the entrance from the sea that led to her. Over the green higher hills to the south, the evening fog rolled like herds of sheep coming to cote in the golden city. I've never seen her more lovely."

-- John Steinbeck, "Travels with Charley: in Search of America", 1960