Peek at Our Urban Travels #SundayStills Photo Challenge

We don’t get much time to travel into cities if we’re road tripping. Mainly because we enjoy being alone in nature rather than in traffic, noise, and people. In fact most of my city time was related to work trips. Now that we’ve both retired, it’s a little less attractive to seek city adventure. I have a couple cities visited post retirement and two others of your more typical city images. Here’s 4 areas in the US to share.

• Honolulu, HI (2020 vacation)
• West Coast – San Francisco, CA (work and pleasure)
• East Coast – New York, NY (Old Trip from 2009)
• Central – San Antonio, TX (2020 New Years with the Camper!)

Rainbows & Ocean Front Make a Pleasant City Walk About

Being a large city, Honolulu isn’t a normal island trip I’d plan, because who wants an island trip to a large city? However, I made an exception so we could visit Pearl Harbor. A couple years ago (yes, just before Covid lockdowns) we finally had the chance to make it over there. I do enjoy a little city walk abouts and when that’s coupled with the ocean views on one side as you’re walking then it’s even better.

We also enjoyed taking in the views from a park overlooking the area. Unfortunately, I don’t recall where this was taken from or even if we were able to walk through the city streets to get to it. We didn’t have a car for most of our stay and pedal power was our transportation!

West Coast has Character

San Francisco, CA is a city I have traveled to for work numerous times and have enjoyed a site seeing trip here and there. In fact, the last time we were in San Francisco was courtesy of United Airlines’ and the regular fog creating a very long flight delay. When life doles out lemons, make some lemonade! The delay was long enough to give us time to explore. We found Caltrain and rode to The Embarcadero. There we spent several hours walking amongst other tourists enjoying the wharf area and lunch. What could’ve been a miserable 6 hours in an airport terminal made for a new adventure.

City with Character

Architecture provides character along many of the streets lines with apartment buildings. The city is a little challenging to walk with its ups and down hills. The cable cars (no picture) are a mode of transportation that is unique and helps you get around.

Another iconic element in San Francisco are the bridges. The city itself is on a peninsula with three bridges spanning across the bays to connect all of the urban sprawl together.

Here’s the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge showing the typical cloudy weather that forms along the Northern California coast line.

The East Coast has Energy

New York City is where I first saw street performers, artists, broadway plays, massive lighted up bill boards and was able to ride the subway. I have loved being in New York city, but as you can tell from this photo it’s been several years. This was taken back in 2009 when we took a week long trip for our daughter’s 16th birthday. Great experience to teach a young person how to navigate such a huge place.

When visiting the city it can be a culture shock if you’re not used to large cities and the mounds of humans buzzing around. On one hand it’s intoxicating and on the other it’s exhausting!

Spacious San Antonio, TX

Compared to the West Coast and East Coast large city examples, San Antonio is a breath of fresh air. Both San Francisco and New York City are very walkable cities, however, what if you enjoy more outdoorsy areas and nature?

San Antonio, Texas has stolen my heart. I was enamored with the river walk both in downtown and all along the outskirts of the city. The history was a large attraction for visitors and quite intriguing. If you ever get an opportunity to visit this area, take a river cruise, enjoy a meal at one of the many restaurants downtown, rent bikes and soak it all in. Here’s a blog link to our San Antonio trip over New Years 2020. Turned out I was able to actually find a small private camp ground just 15 minutes from downtown. That also made it ideal for us to actually visit a city while we’re in the truck camper.

Our San Antonio Videos:

These are both from my early video making days and not quite up to my current skill or equipment level. They’re fun none-the-less and I hope you enjoy San Antonio!