With an aversion to making plans, I tend to arrive in a new city unaware of how long I will be staying. My recent trip to San Francisco offers no exception. Not long after I arrived, I began to notice how transient the city appeared to be. In hindsight, I put this early observation down to booking into a youth hostel, where the average length of stay was three nights. In such surroundings, I felt a slight pressure to follow suit and ‘do’ the city quickly and then move onto the next. In truth, when it comes to discovering a new city, I’m more three months than three days.

I like to live in a city, become comfortable with a routine and leave, just as the routine becomes too familiar and tedious. I like to sample a selection of coffee shops, weigh up their good and bad points and then, after much deliberation, offer one of them the prestigious title, ‘My Favourite’. I like to sit in said coffee shop and sip my chai latte, whilst watching familiar faces wander by. I like to know the city without a map or guidebook. I like to get to know its people, as I believe it’s with them you find the cities’ heart. And San Francisco has heart. A big, colourful, ever changing one, that’s beat can be heard like the drums being played on the infamous Height Street.

On my first day in the city I decided to go exploring. Without a street map to refer to, I managed to successfully deviate from the safety of the designer clothing boutiques that line the streets of Union Square. Within minutes, I found myself caught up in a queue of people hoping to be one of the lucky ones to be given a bed for the night in the cities’ homeless shelter. A few blocks later I was in Chinatown negotiating my way through a busy and vegetable buying crowd, knowing it was probable, that within just a few short steps, the city would transform and present me with something entirely different. The weather often reflected this contract and would threaten rain in one district of the city and promise glorious sunshine in another.

Three months was up and so was my visa. As I said goodbye to the city, I realised I still hadn’t seen it all and wondered if I ever could. I vowed to be back soon to give it a good try. Back to the ever changing city, that transforms with the help of its people, who represent every colour of the; race, religious, class, gender and sexuality spectrum. Its people who, acknowledge these differences, embrace them and display them proudly. Knowing that whoever they are, wherever they sleep, whoever they worship, however much money they make and whoever they love, there is a place for them in this beautifully diverse city.

Story written by Matthew David Price

**This short Travel Story was submitted as part of the Holiday Travel Writing Competition. All short-listed entries such as this one are published in our online Travel Guide**