The Mosser is a sort of boutique hotel in the very heart of San Francisco on Fourth Street. Market Street with all its shops is just stone throw away and SFMoMA is just across a park.

The hotel has been recently redesigned, so the rooms are airy and stocked with good amenities. Note that you’ll have to share bathroom with other travellers, unless you book a deluxe room.

If you arrived through the front page (or are even reading this article through it), you may have noticed that the page has been upgraded heavily,

I found the old front page too static and it didn’t serve my purposes acting as a launchpad for exploring the whole site. Most of the visitors are either visiting the journal from time to time or then find their way to travel reviews using search engines.

Now the new page contains direct links to the major parts of the site and the latest activity in the journal. Several random reviews are shown on the right side. The page header image contains the date and number of the latest journal entry.

The rest of the site has not changed, so you may still use your old direct links to plug in to the journal or use the XML feeds.

Hopefully you find the new front page attractive and usable.

Nob Hill is one of the famous San Francisco hills, very close to the city centre and Union Square. The hill hosts a park surrounded by a bunch of top-class hotels with excellent views to the city and the bay and Grace cathedral — once imposing and now dwarfed by the towers.

The best way to go the hill is walking, but it may not be option for everybody. Taxis and rental cars are good choices, too, but maybe the best non-walking transport method is to take a cable car running on California street.

Nob Hill, area surrounding California Street at Taylor, San Francisco, CA, USA

Before the modern cars, San Francisco public transport was handled by cable cars. As the hills are steep in the residential area in the city, normal light train systems cannot be used. The cable cars move by grabbing a constantly moving cable that runs below the street level between the tracks. When the car has to stop, the driver opens the grip.

There are four lines in the city, but the most famous of them runs from the downtown end of Powell Street to the Wharf on Hyde Street.

The cars are fully packed during high seasons and you have to reserve some time for standing in the queue at the both ends of the tracks, or then trust your luck the hop on the car on several stops during the journey.

www.sfcablecar.com, Powell St. on Market St. or Hyde St. on Wharf, San Francisco, CA, USA

I visited theatre yesterday with Sanna to see Lars Norén’s Akti in Teatteri Takomo. The play concentrates to a terrorist that has been in jail for several years and won’t have any possibilities to be free ever again. A doctor comes to check her (yes, her!) medical condition and she provocates the doctor to lunatic heights during the play.

The play starts quite normally, but gradually the mood changes to absurd, scary and even schizophrenic. The theme revolves around the holocaust and German family life.

The trip was not maybe most pleasing theatre experience I’ve had, but it was sort of hypnotic. The play left many questions open — in fact, it didn’t answer any questions, just posed new ones. Most of them started with ‘why’.

If you need food for thought (and understand Finnish), check it out at www.teatteritakomo.fi

Coit Tower is an art deco tower erected on Telegraph Hill as memory of San Francisco earthquake firefighters. The tower was funded by Lillie Hitchcock Coit and it was completed in 1933. The tower has several murals on the first floor.

The hill itself has magnificent views to the surrounding areas, including the bay and the downtown.

You can either drive your way up there, or then take the hard path from the shore. There are a set of stairs ‘Filbert Steps’ from Sansome street up to Telegraph hill. The lenght of the stairs is nearly three blocks, but they are worth the burden.

www.coittower.org, 1 Telegraph Hill Boulevard, San Francisco, CA, USA, +1 415 362 0808

San Francisco is built on several hills and they can be very steep. Some of the streets have to be cut, as there would too much drop in one block. Lombard street between Hyde and Leavenworth streets looks like an Alpine road, it swirles back and forth in its tiny space.

The road looks magnificent especially from Leavenworth Street as the curves are surrounded with flowers and other flora.

Please do not take your car down the street, as it is in middle of residential block and there is already now enough visitors going through it.

Lombard Street (Descent begins at Hyde Street), San Francisco, CA, USA