Admittedly, I've seen very few Hitchcock movies. That said, and without any pretense of my knowing anything about Hitchcock whatsoever, I really like Vertigo. James Stewart is one of my favorite actors. And I'm oddly fascinated by Kim Novak, even though I've only seen her in three movies. The bookstore I used to work in sold art, too, and we once had a painting of one of the California missions and I thought I'd been told that it was the one in San Luis Obispo and that it was the one in "Vertigo." Well, this was totally wrong and, after visiting San Luis Obispo earlier this year, it was pretty obvious. The mission in San Luis Obispo didn't resemble the painting or the movie. I'd already seen the one in Santa Barbara and didn't think much about it. But, for some reason, after seeing the mission that I thought was in the painting look so dissimilar, I decided I wanted to see the right one before leaving California.

Our departure from the Golden State is getting closer and closer, which means we're cramming more and more California landmarks into our remaining time. We spent this past week on a wonderful trip in San Francisco. We drove up the coast, which was gorgeous! There was an area just before Monterey when Highway 1 was hugging the sides of seaside cliffs. Sort of scary, but very beautiful. We got to San Francisco on Monday evening and left Friday morning. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were packed with beautiful sights, cable car rides, and very sore feet.

Like an idiot, I'd forgotten to check online before I left home for which mission is the one with the scene. So, I called my mom and she looked it up and said it was the one in San Juan Bautista, which was just a little side trip off of the 101.



It's a perfectly lovely place, but ummm...as you can see...no tower. And the bells are exposed. (If you haven't seen "Vertigo," you should know that a big part of the movie revolves around Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart being at the top of a tall, enclosed bell tower.) Okay, no big deal. Mom had also said that Mission Delores was in the movie. The problem with that is that, well, they go on a long drive to get to the bell tower and Mission Delores is actually in San Francisco.

In the meantime, I completely fell in love with San Francisco. We saw everything we intended to see and made some cool discoveries. One thing I didn't expect to like very much was Alcatraz, but it was actually extremely interesting. The island has a long history, outside of Al Capone.

It was in the Alcatraz gift shop that I started thumbing through a copy of Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco. The awful truth: There is no bell tower! They filmed exterior shots at San Juan Bautista, but the tower was added in later. I guess that was probably a wise thing to do, to keep wackos like me from bugging the poor nuns at what I'm sure would end up being called Hitchcock's mission. We went to Mission Delores the next day, which I did remember from the movie, but it wasn't quite the same.

The most annoying part of it all is that I still don't know what mission was in that painting. I guess now I'll never know.

Labels: movies., travel/tourism.

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