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Paz
And after class did a couple cable car rides but when the class was done at noon on a Friday (and my flight out was on Saturday), I hopped on public transit to ride through about 2/3rds of San Francisco - literally on buses, trollies, and what we call here in Philly - "trackless trollies" (buses that use over head electric like the trollies). Did what I call a "Star Trek" tour including going through Golden Gate Park, the Presidio (home of Star Fleet Academy 
), Golden Gate Bridge, the Haight, Pacific Heights, the Mission District, Chinatown, etc. (my hotel was right near the Embarcadaro).
And I did this the last week of February after leaving Philly in snow boots because we just had 8" of snow, and arriving there with the temps in the low 70s during the day and 40s/50s at night. First place I had ever been where there was a huge blank billboard on top of a hi-rise building where someone had spray-painted "FUCK BUSH" in large letters! 
There was also a small protest march with people banging drums and whatnot - something that we only recently started seeing here in Philly (the drum usage in protests).
San Francisco is quite an experience although the most shocking thing for me was when circling over the city before landing, the view from the plane revealed a place so completely packed with buildings, there was literally little or no open green space outside of Golden Gate Park and a few scattered playgrounds. 
And then there were what we fondly call the "Ace Deux Tres" apartments except these were "Ace Deux Tres Quatros" ones with an apartment on each of 3 floors and in the basement.
And Seattle is a nice trip too and if they ever open the border with Canada again, you can drive up from Seattle to Vancouver, BC (I think it is about 125 - 130 miles or so) and literally be in a whole other world. The prevailing building architecture and street layouts/traffic lights are wild (at least to me). The border crossing up there is in Blaine, WA (which had a palm tree at the crossing entrance - at least when I was there about 25 years ago)!
