Have you ever looked through your camera roll on your phone and found a photo that’s just too good not to share? It might be because it makes you smile as you remember a happy memory or because you’re proud of how good the photo turned out.
Sunday Snapshot is my new weekly feature where I plan to share a photo I love with you…
I love this photo for so many reasons – most of which have absolutely nothing to do with the subject of the photo!
Let me introduce you to the ‘Painted Ladies‘ – they’re a row of colourful houses in San Francisco that have featured in all sorts of TV shows and films. They’re pretty famous and were top of the list when I googled ‘top photo spots in San Francisco’ when I was there last year.
My trip to San Francisco last year was a pretty significant event in my life. I travelled there on my own and spent five days in a city on the other side of the world and the time I spent there was genuinely life-changing for me.
The trip came two months after my Dad died and at the time, I was a little bit broken as the months leading up to my Dad passing away were pretty bad and before he died I was probably as close to the edge as I’ve ever been in my life. The months afterwards were hugely difficult as I struggled to process everything that happened.
I got an email from Pinterest one day inviting me to visit them at their HQ in San Francisco one night and mentioned it in passing to Mr Frugal. I had no intention of travelling that far, no matter how amazing it would be to spend some time with Pinterest at their very cool HQ but he seemed to think it would be good for me and that if I didn’t go, I’d really regret it.
Somehow, within 24 hours, I had a flight and hotel booked and I was busy getting organised as I had two weeks until I travelled.
I got there and had two and a bit days completely on my own before I headed to Pinterest for the day which is why I found myself searching online for the best photo spots in San Fransisco. I felt drawn to these houses for some weird reason so even though they were a bit out of the way, I decided that I needed to visit them. I ended up getting a bus to the nearest place I could find to them and then walked a good mile or so using Google maps as my guide to help me navigate myself from the bus stop to them.
After a few wrong turns and some quite steep uphill walking through Alamo Square, I finally got there and I know this is going to sound really corny but I felt super emotional when I saw them. Honestly, I had a little cry because it felt like such a huge deal to me – I’d not only travelled halfway around the world on my own but I’d also navigated myself across the city to get to somewhere that I wanted to go. It felt significant to me at the time because doing something for no other reason than because I wanted to do it felt good and it’d been a while since I’d felt that good.
I’m a bit gutted now though looking back as I felt that emotional that I took a few photos and spent the rest of my time sitting under a tree trying to process why I was so emotional over a few houses. 😉 I wish I’d taken a better photo as the San Fransisco skyline is amazing behind these houses and the colours of them are so much prettier than I managed to capture.
Even so, this photo still makes me very happy so I thought you might like to share it with you today!
Don’t miss out on future posts like this – receive updates directly to your inbox by email by adding your email address here and hitting subscribe. You can also follow me on Twitter, BlogLovin or Networked Blogs and I’d love to see you over on my Facebook page and on Instagram. You can find out more about me here.
