Valma "collects" houses, she can't afford to buy tham straight out so instead she claims that they are hers but she allows the people living in them to stay there. So everybody is happy. In San Francisco we collected more houses than in the rest of the known world. The area in which Matthew Tepper lives (and where we stayed) is chock full to overflowing with attractive and interesting houses, so much so that in the end Valma had to collect whole blocks. We didn't see many of the fans in the city, we spent most of our time just looking at things. On the Saturday we took ourselves and a map of the city ripped out of the telephone book into the city and started walking. We didn't know what we would see when we began but as the afternoon wore on we saw a lot of the interesting things and most of them by accident. We got off the tram because a woman told us that a new store was being opened, and though we were amazed that stores open on Saturday afternoons we went to see it but didn't stay long. Prom there Union Square is just around the corner and from there Chinatown is no distance at all. Chinatown gets to be a bit dull after a time, a long street stuffed with shops all selling the same things so we headed off in another direction which led us up a steep hill which (on looking at the map) might have been Russian Hill. It was steep enough that there were steps in the footpath. Odd observation: as we walked up the steps a man came down towards us. We qere walking up the left hand side as Australians normally do and the man would not allow something like that which violated his natural instincts so he got off the steps and crossed over in front of os so that he could pass us on his left. Why would he want to do a thing like that? From the top of the hill we had an excellent view of the city and the bay but over a distance we saw another hill with what seemed to be a water tower on the top. We decided to walk over to it but on the way we stopped in a big park in front of a church and watched a bit of street theatre. The hill turned out to be Telegraph Hill. The view was even better and we amused ourselves watching a woman who was too short to use the coin-in-the-slot telescope and wondered why; all she could see was the sky. Even more interesting than the two hills were the houses around them, coming down the steps from Russian Hill we passed a nice house which had a little door with the sign "tradesman's entrance". Coming down from Telegraph on another steep path we passed through some beautiful areas of wild garden and houses which must be worth a mint. Charlie & Dena told us that the person who'd owned their place before them had moved to Telegraph Hill. It was the only explanation I would have accepted for anybody moving from that house. We met Matthew at the opera house (when we found it) and stood through a performance of "Salome" - standing room tickets for the opera is something I hadn't known about before and straight after a day of walking we didn't want to know about it. The opera was alright but late because a couple of the main performers got themselves stranded in a traffic jam on the Golden Gate bridge - along with all those people going to see them no doubt. 72