The first time I visited California was on my first ever overseas trip, a family holiday when I was 12 years old. We stayed in Palo Alto; I tasted my first avocado and my first bagel, and sampled my first ever drive-in movie and drive-in ‘Jack in the Box’ burger bar. We rode the cable cars in San Francisco, encountered a black bear – bafflingly brown in colour – in Yosemite National Park, and fed the seals at Monterey Bay. At the Carmel Mission I remember chasing a humming bird around the gardens in an unsuccessful attempt to get a photo.

Today, back in the San Francisco Bay area again after all those years, I finally got another humming bird photo opportunity.
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