San Francisco - USA

From Kansas to California with two cards from São Francisco received in 2011. 

 US-1135820, sent by Prows Family.

"San Francisco it is the fourth most populous city in California and the 13th most populous city in the United States, with a 2010 estimated population of 805,235.

San Francisco is a popular international tourist destination, renowned for its chilly summer fog, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of Victorian and modern architecture and its famous landmarks, including the Golden Gate Brideg, cable cards and Chinatown." - in: wikipedia

The card shows 4 of the San Francisco landmarks, the victorian houses, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz and Lombard Street.

This card, sent by Suzanne "stadler", shows the famous Painted Ladies, a row of Victorian houses at 710–720 Steiner Street, across from Alamo Square park, in San Francisco, also known as "Postcard Row." The houses were built between 1892 and 1896.

"Painted ladies" is a term used for Victorian and Edwardian houses and buildings painted in three or more colors that embellish or enhance their architectural details. The term was first used for San Francisco Victorian houses by writers Elizabeth Pomada and Michael Larsen in their 1978 book Painted Ladies - San Francisco's Resplendent Victorians

About 48,000 houses in the Victorian and Edwardian styles were built in San Francisco between 1849 and 1915 (with the change from Victorian to Edwardian occurring on the death of Queen Victorian in 1901), and many were painted in bright colors.

During World War I and World War II, many of these houses were battleship gray with war-surplus Navy paint. Another sixteen thousand were demolished, and many others had the Victorian decor stripped off or covered with tarpaper, brick, stucco, or aluminum siding.

In 1963, San Francisco artist Butch Kardum began combining intense blues and greens on the exterior of his Italianate-style Victorian House. His house was criticized by some, but other neighbors began to copy the bright colors on their own houses. Kardum became a color designer, and he and other artists such as Tony Cataletich, Bib Buckter and Jazon Wonders began to transform dozens of gray houses into Painted Ladies. By the 1970s, the colorist movement, as it was called, had changed entire streets and neighborhoods. This process continues to this day. - in: wikipedia