San Francisco

USA

October 2006
5 days

3rd to 8th October 2006.

Alrighty a new country at last!

The United States of America.

Canada was a fantastic place to spend six weeks in a car and I think our timing was good too.... Autumn colours and fresh sunshine. With our travelling we have tried to set ourselves a budget of 33pounds each per day. We are obviously not going to starve ourselves in order to meet this or miss out on anything we really wanna do but its always good to have a target. So when I tell you that for Canada we were OVER budget by $4,500 you'll see from the photos that we've been eating pretty well. Oh well 3 months in South America should help the waistlines and the purse strings! Well have to see.....

So forward and on we go and we were so lucky to go to San Francisco and be offered free digs at Sabrina and Martins. Sarahs friends from North London who are renting a flat in the burbs as Sabrina is working at a local university researching the Immune System! Serious stuff!

They made us feel so welcome and we were able to use the flat as a base for the next four weeks. Thanks once again guys.

So we were located just a 10 minute ride out of the city on the Metro which is an overground street bus running on overhead power lines. Their neighbourhood is really cool like Camden with trendy bars, eateries and shops.

So we started by getting our bearings and walking around town, jumping on the famous cable cars that haul you up the steep hills. They still run the old fashioned way with underground cables and the driver simply pulls a huge lever to get an arm to grip the cable! Simple and it works

We slipped through the hustle and bustle of China Town and headed for the piers! Pier 39 is the famous one, with amusements and of course the Sea Lions. About 200 Sea Lions sun bathing on floated rafts/platforms posing for the tourists and making some noise honking! Tired we returned to the flat and knocked up a great stir fry for Sab and Martin to help out...

We spent a day at Ocean Beach to the west of Golden Gate park where the sand was very fine and clean. Was good to sit and listen to the sea and watch guys whizzing up and down on these three wheeled dune buggies being pulled at speed by a kite/parachute. Oh and Sarah found a huge shell in one piece so of course she hastilly washed it, wrapped it and sent it straight back to the UK!

On the Sunday we were back down at Pier 39 to watch a fantastic air display, much like the red arrows in the UK, over the bay. By the way San Francisco bay it turns out is also an apt name as most of the houses here have huge bay windows on the front. After the show we watched a really good band playing tunes from the 80s such as Whacko Jacko, to Prince and some of their own stuff.... They were called &Quot;The New Sekret Service&Quot;....

The place was rammo and no way of getting the tram back so it was an hour and a halfs walk back up the steep hills through the Italian area which was buzzing after some fiesta type celebration and then through China town again before reaching the Metro station slightly weary.

But guess what we had booked for the very next morning?

A flight to Las Vegas!!! wooohooooooo!!!!

...followed by a weekend in Yosemite National Park (Quite a contrast eh!)

Those updates will be here this week!