As much as I hate having to schlep across San Francisco to get there, the Palace of Fine Arts and its lagoon are among my favorite places in the area. It's just lovely, and has neat history, and I've been visiting it most of my life. I'll be sad when the Exploratoriummoves to the waterfront at the Embarcadero, just because fewer people will incidentally be exposed to the Palace of Fine Arts.
Here's a neat video from the air, from a little bitty airship, so you can see how lovely it is.
Stephen Fry likes it, in part because it's near so many beautiful places:
That's one of my favorite things about Northern California in general: It's a short drive to the High Sierra, some of the most beautiful parts of California's coast, to farmlands, to really great urban advantages, to the Golden Gate Bridge, to science museums and art, because there is open space and nature everywhere -- visionaries began preserving it here more than a century ago -- and because we have the climate to enjoy it year-round. (That is true for most places depending on what climate you like; with my tendency to get really sick in hot humidity, I can't bear those climates in the summer.)
I don't want to live in San Francisco though. I have before, but now, I want a yard for my dog, and I want not to have my house actually touching other houses (it's just a fire danger worry, house fires there can displace a few families), and San Francisco proper gets a bit cold and windy for me off and on all year, what with water on three sides. And I'm a gimp, and SF has a lot of uphill and downhill.
But it's a nice place to visit, and I'm glad I get to do that a lot. I discover new things there on a regular basis, though I've been visiting for nearly 50 years, and I'm glad I get to raise my child so near such a treasure.
I collect natural history, environmental, and geography books, almost compulsively. I look for used versions where I can (to save paper) but also appreciate that many of these books come out in runs of a few thousand copies, and aren't profit-makers for the publishing companies, so when they come out new, I buy them while they're new. If you like Geographile and want to let me know, please either comment on my posts, or visit my Powell's wishlist to feed my book collection. You might find books you like there, too.
I am a middle-aged geographilic student and writer. You can find me on Twitter as @geographile (mostly geographilic feed/retweets/info) and @mactavish (more personal, still science-oriented).
