USA Guide
California
San Francisco Bay Area
Of the six million people who make their home in the vicinity of San Francisco, only a lucky one in eight lives in the city itself. Everyone else is spread around the Bay Area, a sharply contrasting patchwork of very rich and very poor towns dotted down the peninsula or across one of the three impressive bridges that span the chilly waters of the exquisite natural harbor. In the East Bay are industrial Oakland and intellectual Berkeley, while south of the city, the Peninsula holds the gloating wealth of Silicon Valley, which gained its nickname from the multibillion-dollar technology industry. To the north across the Golden Gate Bridge is the woody, leafy landscape and rugged coastline of Marin County, an elitest pleasure zone of conspicuous luxury and abundant natural beauty.