The New Bay Bridge

We stayed in Oakland for the Bay Area portion of our trip.  I'd stayed in a reasonably good "motor inn" in the Jack London District when I was out in 2010, and I thought Mary would enjoy it, even though the neighborhood was "edgy."  It did turn out to be convenient for the most part, and it definitely saved us a little money staying in East Bay for the three nights.

I had a meeting on Friday morning near the federal building, and our plan would be to circle back and catch an early ferry across the bay to San Francisco.  This little excursion costs about $6 one way - it's a tourist bargain that everyone should know about.  Plus, if you happen to geek out on great engineering, this gives some great views of the Bay Bridge - the topic of this post.

Of course, I have my panoramic image above of the bridge, taken as we pulled into the berth at the Ferry Building in San Francisco.  We continued on to Pier 39 - and as it turned out, we finished our day early enough to catch the ferry back in the evening, so I snapped the photo below of the new span, on the east side of treasure island.  I'm pairing it with a morning shot of demo in progress of the old span.

If you want to geek out further on this topic, there are some really good YouTubes of the construction and demolition.  I've got a couple of them embedded in the post below: