Saturday, March 21, 2009

San Francisco from the Rooftop

This series of photos were taken from the top floor of a San Francisco parking garage. The view from this angle is quite different than from the street.


How many garbage cans do you see in this alley?


You can see the famous 210 ft. Coit Tower landmark at the far left atop of Telegraph Hill.


From this view, you can see two of San Francisco's grand hotels noted by an American flag flying on their rooftops.
The one on the left is the 19-story Mark Hopkins Hotel opened in 1939. The top floor is a restaurant known as "The top of the Mark". Click here to read about its illustrious history.
On the right is the Fairmont Hotel opened in 1907. The 23-story tower you see was added in 1961 housing the city's first glass elevator that takes guests on a thrilling vertical ride from the outside of the building. Aside from housing tourists and visiting Presidents & royalty to the city, Tony Bennett debuted his famous song "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" at one of its ballrooms. To read about the hotel history, click here.


Have a nice weekend,
Karen

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! Beautiful shots. I've only been to S.F. once and loved it! I love the shadows in your fourth pic...nice!

photowannabe said...

Great shots. I love the different viewpoint of my favorite city.
To answer your question, the bridge is both car and ped. accessible. They were working on the bridge a few months ago. I'm not sure if the work is finished or not. We just parked off the road in a cleared off area..its not an official parking area, but safe to do so. There is also a trail off the side which allowed us to walk out on sort of a catwalk area. It scared me to death because I don't do heights too well. The bridge didn't bother me because the railing is pretty high.
Its a great area to sleuth around in.

photowannabe said...

Nope, the iguana isn't real. I thought it was such a good piece that I had to take a picture for future use. it was pretty big and I don't think I would have gotten that close if it was real.

roentare said...

The cross sign is very nice in deed

I like all the images of roof tops. Image number 3 and 4 are very good

dot said...

HAHA! I like the alley shot but no one could I count all those garbage cans.

Lilli & Nevada said...

Nice photos of SF but i have to say i been there once and was not all that impressed, but that was many many yrs ago and coming from a little of hick town the place scared me to death, as we drove up those hills and saw all those grits on windows. But then that was when i was a so called late teenager.

AVCr8teur said...

Thank you all for your comments.

Roentarre: I wished I knew the name of the church with the big cross.

Dot: I agree that there were too many garbage cans.

Lilli: Depends which neighborhood you drove by, it could be worse or better now. Sorry you had a bad experience. Come back for a 2nd look.

Rune Eide said...

Nice to see SF again! You didn't catch "my hotel". It was on Union Square (no, I didn't have to pay it myself)...

Jim Klenke said...

Must be a large garage. Nice views.