After driving ~6000km, our road-trip was coming to an end. But before returning to San Francisco, we took a final detour to visit some of California’s picturesque coastal towns. Being late September, we were not expecting to spend time under the sun, on the white sands of the famous California beaches, so it was without surprise that we found a cloudy Carmel-by-the-sea, with sporadic rain showers.
A small town with around 3000 inhabitants, Carmel offers its visitors a refreshing calming setting, in a beautiful natural landscape. A town strongly dedicated to tourism and arts, Carmel-by-the-Sea has plenty of art galleries, private mansions and boutique hotels that charge prices that not everyone can afford (not us). From Carmel, we drove to Pacific Grove, another small town on the Pacific, and then to Monterey, a more affordable city, where we spent the night.
In the next morning, we headed back to San Francisco, to drop off the car, and to effectively conclude our 6629 km & 19 days American West road-trip. We still had 4 more days to explore San Francisco and the Bay area. With plenty of time to visit the city, we decided to walk the streets of San Francisco, instead of taking public transportation. Like in any other city, this is the best way to really explore the streets and neighborhoods of that city.
In a stroke of bad luck, our stay in San Francisco coincided with a major conference that brought more than 20000 people to downtown San Francisco, making the hotel rooms availability scarce and the prices sky-rocket… We stayed in the mid-market neighborhood, less than 1 km from downtown and 2 km from the modern financial district. Despite being in the vicinity of modern and wealthy buildings and hotels, that region of San Francisco felt as if we were in another country, with a significant amount of homeless people and garbage on the streets. While during the day we never felt unsafe, at night was another story. Especially because the streets of San Francisco had very few people walking by (and in many streets, we were the only 2 people walking). We estimate that we’ve walked around 30 km just in San Francisco city, and during some of the walks we passed by other streets where poverty was strikingly present, either by the sheer number of homeless people, soup kitchen, and also by the many volunteers of Urban Alchemy, a non-profit organization that aims to make degraded neighborhoods safer.
With most of San Francisco explored, and after visiting two art museums, we still had 1 day to spend. Without a car, we had to rely on the public transportation network. Luckily, there were plenty of choices. As academics, we were curious to visit Berkeley university, so we decided to cross to the other side of the bay and visit Oakland and Berkeley.
Oakland came as a nice surprise, especially after San Francisco. Unquestionably, we did not explore Oakland as much, and it would not be a surprise that other neighborhoods could also be more degraded and had a significant homeless population. I really enjoy contemporary art, particularly street art. It really brings life to a city, and Oakland city center was filled with very interesting mural paintings, from purely artistic interpretations, to more civic interventions.
From Oakland, we headed north until we reached downtown Berkeley. As it was lunch time, the city center was filled with students, although some were high school, and not university students. We headed to the campus, had lunch, and then returned to the hotel in San Francisco. It was time to start packing and preparing for the 9500 km flight home…
One world of color 
Photos taken with the Canon EOS Rebel T2i + 18-135mm lens OR with SamsungA13 cellphone