San Francisco

• I lived in the Inner Sunset District at three minutes walk from the UCSF main building with Mrs. Willa Crowell, secretary in the Department of the external supervisor of my PhD. My friendly landlady deserved the first picture made with my new digital camera.
• A tour of 1422 Fifth Avenue: the back entrance seen from Judah Street (that goes from the UCSF to the Pacific Ocean, crossing Fifth Avenue), Judah again from the crossing with Fifth, a look into Fifth from the crossing (1422 is the red house behind the post), and finally 1422 from the front: this was a virtual tour around the block.
• A walk through the nearby Golden Gate Park: going west, looking east (the white UCSF building can be seen behind the trees), a pond with aquatic birds, a squirrel.
• A dull shot of the town by night from the other side of the Golden Gate, that just shows how light-sensitive the camera is.

• On the way back to Europe I stopped four days in New York. Actually the first day I went by train to Philadelphia where I met my old bud Russ Lewis: see him in front of the city skyline and with me in front of the railway station.
• I left Philly in the early afternoon and had time to see Princeton, halfway to New York. It was winter and it became dark pretty soon: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

• I lived in a flat of my cousin Isabella Germano in East 98th Street (from east, from west). These are 1, 2, 3 views from the window. The dark skyscraper behind the Orthodox church is the Mount Sinai Medical Center where she works.
• A walk through the nearby Central Park makes you forget you are in such a big town: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
• The Solomon Guggenheim Museum, Frank Lloyd Wright's last building, is amazing. Photographing inside is forbidden, but the camera is so light-sensitive that I could do without flash and therefore being discovered: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Indeed, the worst image is the only one where I used the flash.
• Then I walked to the City (1, 2) until the New York Stock Exchange. Outside: 1, 2 (the queue are tourists awaiting to be admitted); inside: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Here too it is forbidden to take photographs inside, perhaps because the flashes would disturb the operators; but again using a flash did not give good results, because the light reflects on the glass. I learned that Wall Street is on a side of the NYSE; the front is on Broad Street.
• Back to the "normal" world: some red brick houses near the old harbour.

• The flight from Rome to Pisa goes past the islands of Elba (and its principal town Portoferraio), Capraia, Gorgona, and the Meloria shallows. You can hardly see anything in the mist? So do I.

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