Barbary Coast Trail (3) -- Powell Street

The Cable car starting point is located at Powell and Market Street. I didn't really take Cable Car for visiting before; just like that I have stayed in Shanghai for so many years, I've never really been to the famous Yu Garden. 真是越近在眼前的东西越不怎么在意啊!

Until the day I walked the Barbary Coast trail, I just realized that I have been stupid for such a long time. I always thought that the cable car is just like the tram -- it is powered by the engine in the tram but runs along the rail. H was teasing me quite a lot on that. :P Now I learned that it runs by the cable underground. Of course, Cable car has to be run by Cable, literally, how stupid I was! The cable kept running underground all the time, the cable car just grabs the cable when it needs to run, and looses the grip and brakes when it needs to stop. It doesn't have a power inside at all! If you look closely between the gap of the rail, you can see the cable running underground. We did that a few times, staring at the ground to see how cable works, then people stopped next to us, trying to find out what we were looking at, they may wonder whether we found a gold mine there! :P A new gold rush age!

Cable car @ Powell street


It is also interesting to see how Cable car makes a U-Turn at the station. Since the rails (back and forth) are pretty close to each other, and cable car size is not small, it's kind of hard for Cable car to make a U-turn after it comes back to the station. So a big turning wheel with rail is built on the ground. The wheel's diameter is about the Cable car's size. And the rail is connected to the one side of rail first, when Cable car gets on the big wheel, the whole wheel will be turned certain degrees by human force, so that the rail will connect to the other side of rail and cable car can keep on going. It is pretty amazing to see how it works.

Walking along Powell street, there are very nice antique shops along the street. I love the window design there. Maybe I shall study to be a window designer.


The antique shop has lots of interesting stuff, like those very delicate carved elephant trunks, it looked to me like the very precious Chinese antiques. I wondered how they get those. By robbering or stealing from China during the Qing Dynasty?

In front of an antique shop.

Monkey A: Hear no evil
Monkey B: See no evil
Grace: Think no evil
Monkey C: Speak no evil

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