San Francisco

Our lives in Rick's hands at the wheel of an electric tour car
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The first day we wandered around the city and headed down to Fisherman's Wharf. Well, I say wandered, it was more of a hike really given the hills of San Fran. We booked some tickets for the Alcatraz tour for the following day and decided we'd do a city tour for the rest of today. There are a number of hop on / hop off buses that do tours of the main areas but we fancied something a bit different and found a company that hired out electric cars that you could drive around the city. They had built in GPS systems which told you where to go and a disembodied voice served as a tour guide. All in all it worked pretty well. Unfortunately the tour guide didn't also remind you to drive on the right and not run people over which was advise Rick, the designated driver, was most in need of.

Look, I'm in jail. I believe I may be the first to have done a shot like this in Acatraz
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We decided we'd take one of the traditional trams back to the Hostel and save out legs the agony. We ended up queuing for quite a while, enough time for me to nip into a bookshop and buy an offical scrabble dictionary to settle the increasing competitive games myself and Patrice had been enjoying  ("Unwire", I mean! Seriously). Thank's again housemates for a fine leaving present.

That evening we headed out into town to a district recommended by someone at our hostel that turned out to be pretty much dead. Nice job. We made the best of it however and by the morning were nursing some pretty sweet hangovers. I can tell you, getting in a taxi in San Fran the morning after a night on the sauce can be quite a bilious experience. We were in a rush to get the boat for the Alcatraz tour and the taxi jumped off each hill and careered down the roads like a rollercoaster. We all just about managed to keep hold of our breakfasts. And then it was straight onto a ferry to cross the choppy waters to Alcatraz. I'm sure I felt worse than any man being taken there before.

View over the bridge
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In the evening we went to a gig in Town. Cat Powers, a female vocalist who Rick adores. She's got a kind of Nora Jones but from the deep south kinda voice. It's got a lovely warm soothing feel, unfortunatley she also had a pretty bad cold and kept making hacking noises like was coughing up a furball inbetween songs. Maybe that's how she got her name, I don't know.

Final day and we picked up out hire car after about an hour of faffing about. We'd all planned on driving it, however when it came to pick it up, we were only allowed two drivers :( As me and Nikki were the only ones with credit cards we ended up the designated drivers.  We drove to Haight, the hippy district which seemed really cool, kind of reminds me of the northern quater in manchester. It would have been good to have more time in SF so we could have stayed around there and gone out but unfortunatley our whistle stop tour of the US didn´t allow it.

Chowder at Fisherman's Wharf
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We stayed in San Fran 2 days but it's definatley the sort of place I would have liked to stay longer. The problem with travelling so quickly around places is that you rarely get the chance to settle and really get a feel for the place. Also, if you don't happen to be there on a weekend, you can end up missing out on the nightlife.

On the way out, we went over the Goldengate Bridge and drove up to a view point where you could get a fantastic view of the bridge and the city beyond. After the sightseeing was done, we headed down the coastal drive of Highway 1 and onto Santa Cruz!

More San Franciso pics can be found here:

San Fran Pics