San Francisco: Espresso Thoughts

We were booked to fly out of San Francisco, and we had a whole day there.

As I sat down for an espresso in North Beach, the city’s Italian quarter, I contemplated our two weeks in America.

We had just driven 1900 miles across a country of extremes.

The richest nation in the world, the US showed us some extreme poverty.

The birthplace of Google, Apple and Microsoft, it is a place where urban infrastructure and consumer technology seem to be 15 years behind every other country.

The land of incomparable natural beauty, it failed to transport its outdoor aesthetics to its towns and cities, — famously built on a grid pattern, a lot of them are simple, functional and uninviting.

We met quite a few people, — all of them, without exception, open, welcoming and very talkative. But the legendary American service with a smile seemed, to us, to only exist in Hollywood films.

This country is so huge that it is, of course, impossible to understand it on a two-week trip. But I think we made a start.

Now you can go back to the preface and the front page and read the whole thing again.