Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles

San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.6 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland. The only consolidated city-county in California, it encompasses a land area... of about 46.9 square miles on the northern end of the San Francisco Peninsula, giving it a density of about 17,179 people per square mile . It is the most densely settled large city in the state of California and the second-most densely populated large city in the United States after New York City. San Francisco is the fourth most populous city in California and the 13th most populous city in the United States, with a population of 805,235 as of the 2010 Census. The San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metropolitan area has a population of 4,335,391. In 1776, colonists from Spain established a fort at the Golden Gate and a mission named for Francis of Assisi on the site.
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New Orleans is the birthplace of Jazz, a major US port city, important in river transshipment, naval logistics, and the illegal drug trade. New Orleans is located at the mouth of the Mississipi River, just south of where the river splits off into Lake Pontchartrain, which forms the northern city... limit and a unique ecosystem because of the salt water boundary. The Pontchartrain Causeway is the longest bridge in the world. New Orleans is unique in the United States for many reasons. It shares more in common with european cities and Montreal than most other American cities, and both historically and liguistically has more in common with other port cities like New York than other cities in the South . The architecture of the Vieux Carre, or French Quarter, mainly comes from the 18th century Spanish period, is reminiscent of many european cities, and changes are tightly controlled. The Garden District contains many stately mansions built in the early 19th century, after the city was purchased by the US. There are two distinct local cuisines, cajun and haute creole. Culturally and economically, since the decline of the local oil industry in the 1970's, the city and the attitude of local residents have more in common with a banana republic or a small caribbean nation than most US cities. Tourism is the major industry, and Mardi Gras is the major holiday.
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