So that was how we came to be coming into land at San Francisco Airport (SFO) to a city that we had been told demanded at least but no less than a quarter of our entire holiday, and as always it was the grand scale of America stretched out below that strikes you first. Five years previously it had been Las Vegas; toy- like and oddly out of place in a vast sandy expanse like a travelling fair long past its heyday pulled up in the corner of an isolated field in the openness of the countryside. With San Francisco it was the multiplies necessitated by the scale; the cars, lanes on freeways, expanses of water, tiers of housing and the mountains, all bedecked with a cloud filled sky dulled and scented by the forest fires that burnt out of control to the north of the city.