Sinatra sang about it: “A foggy day in London Town, had me low and had me down. I viewed the morning with alarm, the British Museum had lost its charm.” Sorry, Frank, but you were wrong. No weather of any kind, nor even heavy World War II bombing, could cause the British Museum to lose its charm.

Just 15 minutes west of downtown and about 20 minutes from the Tucson International Airport is a rootin’, tootin’ vintage Western town theme park called Old Tucson. Celebrating its 70th birthday in 2009, the authentic-looking 1800s frontier town was built originally as a very detailed movie set for the movie, “Arizona”, starring Bill Holden and Jean Arthur.

Other Western movies and TV series have been made at Old Tucson, some with such famous Hollywood names as John Wayne, Bing Crosby, Roy Rogers, Errol Flynn, James Stewart and an actor who went on to another career, Ronald Reagan.

Although I've never been there for more than a couple of days or weeks at a time, my love affair with the City by the Bay goes back almost 65 years. As a 17-year-old graduate of Navy boot camp, my first trip ever out of the East was to report to the Naval Base at Treasure Island, California.

Treasure Island conjured up images of pirates, Long John Silver, yo ho ho and all that adventure stuff. It turned out to be a bunch of drab Navy barracks on a little hunk of land under the Oakland Bay Bridge, halfway between San Francisco and Oakland.

The magnificent abbey has been standing like a sentinel guarding France astride an isolated strip of sand on a Normandy bay since the Sixth Century. In addition to its permanent occupancy by cloistered monks, the abbey and nearby town have been the destination of Catholic pilgrims and tourists ever since.