El Presidio de San Francisco

Saturday 8 August sees Lady P, Flashman and the Major up and away to SF on the now familiar BART to explore the Presidio. But first, we line up for the cable car ride up the hill. Tick off the experience, but Flashman is a bit underwhelmed. Lady P has found a walking tour of the Presidio, so we need to get there by 1.00 PM. This necessitates a cab ride, as the delay on another cable car would cut it too fine. Luckily for us, the cab is nearby. A strange driver he turns out to be. Probably Russian or Eastern European extraction by the accent and we get a real dose of that when he takes a mobile call from, we assume, his long suffering wife. He heads off for the Presidio in a round about route, so Lady P leans over from the back and shows him the correct route on her maps app on the phone. Now this could have turned out one of two ways. Either, as Flashman fears, he could explode into a filthy Russian temperament and throw the phone out the window, or as actually happened, take the phone and use it as a map to deliver us inside the Presidio with a minute to spare. 
The Presidio (means armed fort in Spanish) is now a National Park. A 400 hectare, beautifully wooded corner of the city, with views over the Golden Gate. It was set up as an armed fort by the Spanish in 1776. Then after the Spanish/Mexican War of 1821 it reverted to Mexican control and was expanded. In 1846 the Americans took the Presidio as part of the Mexican/American war, so it went from Spanish to Mexican to American control and stayed that way until 1994, when the US Army reluctantly departed and handed it over to the NP Service. During the US Army occupation, the building housed troops fro the Civil

War 1861-65, the 1898 Spanish/American War where troops bound for the Philipines were staged, through to the Indian wars of 1898 and on to the departure of Brigadier General John J. 'Black Jack' Pershing as Commander of the American Expeditionary Force to WW1. From 1915 to their departure in 1994, the US military extensively developed and maintained the facilities, including beautiful timber Officers' cottages, three story brick soldiers' barracks and ancillary facilities like a military hospital, dispensary, ambulance station, fire station and parade grounds. Interestingly, from 1883 to 1903, the Army decided to convert the Presidio, which was situated on land that was not much more than sand dunes, into a forest to "crown the ridges and cover areas of sand and marsh." In typical military tradition, 400,000 seedlings were planted (all in nice tittle rows, standard placing, tight formation, just like soldiers on parade). Many seedlings were imported from around the world, including what are now massive eucalyptus trees from Australia and pohutukawa's from NZ. So having all this history, we met our volunteer tour guide, Jack. He was about 87 years old, whispered a lot and took off like a rabbit from one stop to another. Even faster than Lady P and that's saying something. However it was a wonderfully informative tour, through a very well kept and laid out, 200 year old military complex. When the National Parks took over, the various buildings were leased out and George Lucas also come in and invested $350 million in redeveloping his film making HQ at the Presidio. 

 Two hours later we adjourned to the Officers Club, now occupied by a nice little restaurant and had some Mexican dips, deep fried pork belly and a couple of sangrias, before cabbing it down hill to Embarcardio for the BART home. Inspired by all the Mexican and Spanish history, we walked around the corner of our Berkeley cottage to a Mexican restaurant for a huge plate of beans, rice, tortillas and other Mexican stuff for dinner. Tas was easily cajoled into a pitcher of Sangria and Roger into some tortilla's and dip for starters so we all rolled down the hill home with Lady P lighting the way with the torch on her mobile phone in order to prevent the older gentleman from tripping over the very uneven sidewalks in the local streets.