Reflections 9 years later
Here I am in 2026, and somehow the opportunity to go back still hasn't quite presented itself. It's
strange how much can change in nine years, yet as I've worked through this journal again, parts of it
have felt like they only happened yesterday.
Rewriting it with the technology that's available now has given me something I didn't have the first
time around: the ability to find the words I always struggled to put to what I was actually feeling.
Going back through the photographs has filled in the gaps left by time and brought memories back
into sharper focus. More than anything, it reminded me just how much those years without travel
made me appreciate these journeys, and it was that realisation that finally inspired me to revisit all
of my old journals properly.
Travel & Accessibility What We Learned
We don't own a car, and I have no intention of driving while on holiday. I'm not sure I could ever
get my head around being on the opposite side of the road, and honestly, it's not a chance I'd want to
take. Fortunately, San Francisco has always been one of those cities where a car is more of a burden
than a necessity, with a public transport network that was already impressive during our visit and
has continued to evolve ever since.
Over the same period, Jane's mobility has worsened considerably—we even moved house because
of it—but it has never stopped her determination to keep travelling. Looking back now, I'm even
more grateful that we experienced the city when we did.
Transport in San Francisco has changed enormously. COVID reshuffled the deck in ways nobody
could have predicted. Gone is the 76X that carried us across the Golden Gate Bridge, along with
several other routes we came to rely on. In many ways, our journal captures a version of the city
that no longer exists.
Not all of it is doom and gloom, though. After years of construction work that began tunnelling
back in 2012, the T Line extension finally opened in 2023, running from the ballpark through to
Chinatown. Some things, it turns out, really are worth the wait.
The changing skyline & city evolution
Like all cities, the skyline is forever shifting, though San Francisco has always seemed to move at
its own pace. Towering skyscrapers remain very much a downtown affair, and there still aren't that
many of them. But change happens in other ways too.
The Vaillancourt Fountain—that magnificently baffling concrete tangle we spent a good paragraph
trying to make sense of—is now in the process of being removed. It hadn't worked in years, and the
cost of repairing it turned out to be roughly the same as redeveloping the entire plaza into a new
park. Even brutalism, it seems, has a budget.
AT&T Park is now Oracle Park, still home to the Giants and, depending on the season, still
probably not winning enough. China Basin, just a short walk away, has become expensive
apartments, although they did build a new waterfront park alongside them, so swings and
roundabouts. The Transbay Transit Center—arguably the most expensive bus station ever built—
opened and then promptly closed again after a crack appeared in one of its main support beams. To
their credit, they fixed it fairly quickly. The rooftop park, complete with a free gondola ride to the
top, is exactly the sort of thing we'd have made a beeline for.
Not every change has been by choice. Rouge Bar was lost to fire. The Nob Hill Theatre didn't
survive the pandemic. COVID, more than anything else, reshaped the city in ways that still linger.
As a city built around the tech industry, San Francisco emptied almost overnight when office
workers went remote. Many left the Bay Area altogether. Large companies reduced their office
space, and the effects rippled through cafés, shops and restaurants across downtown. The Westfield
Shopping Centre is now largely hollow, its flagship stores long gone. The Crocker Galleria—where
we happily ate our weight in Jimmy John's sandwiches—survives, but as a shadow of what it once
was. Even out in the Marin Headlands, the visitor centre has closed, and the bus service that took us
there has disappeared with it.
But it isn't all bleak. Tunnel Tops opened in 2022, creating a sweeping new park linking the Presidio
with Crissy Field—exactly the sort of public space San Francisco has always done well. Cities are
living things: they lose places, gain new ones, stumble, adapt and reinvent themselves. Looking
back now, this journal has become more than a record of our holiday; it's a snapshot of a version of
San Francisco that can never quite exist again.
How This Trip Shapes Our Future Plans
When it comes to transport, we never stop learning—and some things never change, whatever city
you're in. We're looking at you, Vendy-bots.
Time, however, brings its own adjustments. Jane's mobility has continued to decline, and retracing
exactly what we did on this trip simply isn't practical anymore. That doesn't stop us planning,
though. A disability isn't a reason to stay home; it just means you travel differently. You build in
more time, think further ahead, and accept that the route might look a little different from the one
you first imagined. I'm not getting any younger either, and pushing a wheelchair uphill on a
pavement with even the slightest camber is considerably more of a workout than it sounds.
In many ways, that change has been a positive one. Spending more time working out public
transport, finding accessible routes, and slowing the pace means you notice far more of the place
you're actually visiting. We've never been interested in racing from one famous landmark to the next
just to tick boxes. If anything, this trip confirmed that the best memories usually happen somewhere
in between.
From Journal to Legacy — A Creative Journey
I started rewriting these journals over a year ago. The original idea was simple enough: correct the
spelling and grammar, upload everything back to Blogger where it all lives alongside the photo
albums, and call it done. Then I made a few changes to the site layout, decided I could make it look
a bit smarter, and promptly opened a rather large can of worms.
With the arrival of AI, I've been able to achieve things on Blogger that I'd never have managed on
my own. I've got some basic coding skills, but Blogger has always done things its own way.
Describe a problem clearly enough, though, and AI can often point you towards a solution in
seconds. It doesn't do the work for you—you still have to experiment, tweak, and occasionally
wonder why two seemingly identical templates behave completely differently—but it has become
an invaluable tool rather than a shortcut.
Back in 2012, when we travelled to New York, I never imagined I'd still be working on these
journals more than a decade later. In many ways, they've grown up alongside me. What began as a
straightforward tidy-up became a complete reimagining: rewritten narratives, a redesigned website,
audio versions, e-books, online photo books, and now this appendix, looking back with the benefit
of time. The technology will keep evolving, and no doubt these journals will evolve with it. But at
their heart they'll always be the same thing: a way of preserving not just where we went, but how it
felt to be there.
Rediscovering Memories Through Writing, My Final Thoughts
Going back through the photographs, notes, and everything I'd written all those years ago has
brought back so much. Not just the images of where we went, but the sounds, the smells, and the
emotions that surrounded them. You'd think those things would fade with time, but many of them
still feel as though they happened yesterday. Others catch me completely off guard: did we really do
that? A single, slightly blurry photograph with a wonky skyline can unlock a memory I thought had
disappeared forever. Those are often the moments I treasure most.
There may come a time when we're no longer able to travel, and perhaps that's why I've devoted so
much time to bringing these journals back to life. The photographs preserve what we saw. The
writing preserves what happened. And I hope the audio preserves what it felt like.
If these journals have taught me anything, it's that journeys don't really end when you come home.
They wait patiently until you're ready to relive them again.
Never give up dreaming of your next adventure.
To Jane — my true love, my travelling companion, and the person who made every one of these
adventures worth taking.
Con
2026
