California Dreaming

This postcard was sent by a "native Californian girl" via postcrossing [US-968025]. It shows the most famous sights in San Fransisco:

• Cable car
• Fisherman's Wharf
• Pier 39
• Golden Gate Bridge
• Bay Bridge
• Lombard Street
• Alcatraz
• AT&T Park
• Chinatown 
• Balcutha
• Transamerica Building
• Coit Tower

[and...yes!they all feet into one single card :) ]

San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the fourth most populous city in California and the 12th most populous city in the United States, with a 2009 estimated population of 815,358. It is the most densely settled large city (population greater than 200,000) in the state of California and the second-most densely populated large city in the United States. San Francisco is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of more than 7.4 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland.

In 1776, the Spanish established a fort at the Golden Gate and a mission named for Francis of Assisi on the site. The California Gold Rush in 1848 propelled the city into a period of rapid growth, increasing the population in one year from 1,000 to 25,000, and thus transforming it into the largest city on the West Coast at the time. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt. During World War II, San Francisco was the port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, massive immigration, liberalizing attitudes, and other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism in the United States.

Today, San Francisco is a popular international tourist destination, renowned for its chilly summer fog, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of Victorian and modern architecture and its famous landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, and Chinatown. The city is also a principal banking and finance center, and the home to more than 30 international financial institutions, helping to make San Francisco eighteenth place in the world's top producing cities, ninth in the United States, and fifteenth place in the top twenty Global Financial Centers. [wikipedia]