Crissy Field and flight show for Fleet Week SF

Friday, September 6th, 2023, day 6

Today we had a quiet day, unfortunately I caught a cold somewhere and even had a bit of a fever this morning. So we didn't do anything strenuous, but took the bus to Crissy Field, a beautiful section between the Palace of Fine Arts and the Golden Gate Bridge. In San Francisco it's Fleet Week, a mix of air shows and ship parades in the Bay. The highlight every year is the show of the legendary “Blue Angels”, a US Navy squadron with blue fighter jets. These Blue Angels already practiced over the city yesterday and flew over the city several times with a thunderous noise. And all of this today in bright sunshine and summer weather with temperatures over 30°.

We had a good spot on the bay, from where we had a nice view of the Golden Gate Bridge, also Alcatraz and the Palace of Fine Arts. We saw the Navy parachutists parachuting in with the American flag and making a real show of it. Then a plane from United, who are sponsors, came along and did a spectacular air show with low-flying, diving, and go-arounds and shooting straight into the sky, all in a normal passenger plane. And then a few Navy helicopters with a lot of noise. Next came a squadron of ten fighter aircraft whose specialty was flying so closely together that it was a formidable unit. There were a lot of children there with their parents or grandparents, and you can imagine that the children were really excited and stared at the sky with their mouths open.

In the meantime we felt a mixture of tiredness, cold and heat (it was really too hot, even though we were experienced in Spain) and we started our way back. We spent the rest of the day on the bed in the shade and in the cool room and are hoping for a new start tomorrow, especially since tomorrow is our friends' wedding in Berkeley.