Travel is..

Returning to wonderful places.

Like San Francisco.

I just spent a long weekend in the city by the bay and found it as beautiful and interesting as I did when I first visited many, many years ago.

I've since grown used to bizarre dress, piercings and tats, and what some might call in- appropriate behavior, but the original visits to Haight Ashbury were revealing and stayed with e all these years as many individual "declarations of independence. Today one doesn't have to travel far to see young (and not so young) people with the accoutrements of what we used to call fighting city hall.

But you do have to travel to SFO to get a glimpse of one of North America's most beautiful cities.

San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf is still home to some of the best and freshest seafood in the world, a fleet of boats that take you to fish or sightsee and views that are dynamite. I took two tours on Saturday: a Blue and Gold Bay cruise that sails under the Golden Gate Bridge and around Alcatraz and (after a delightful lunch of Shrimp Louis at the venerable Scoma's) took a city tour with Mr. Toad's rides and got up and personal with Pacific Heights and those multi-million dollar homes, drove through the Presidio and down under the bridge, through the Marina and the financial district. The narration and photo ops in San Francisco are remarkable and memorable.

I hope it won't be long until I can return and revisit these marvelous places, but for now I've left a piece of my heart in San Francisco.

Again.