San Francisco! 1148 Miles down!

Me again. Sorry its been a while. I've been a tad busy, and when your traveling with others you get less time to yourself, and it makes doing blog entries a tad hard... plus I'm REALLY lazy. Anyhow, over the next few days I'm going to try and bang out an entry a day. So lets get started!

So as I said the drive to San Fran had been amazing, and the night we arrived, I was struggling to sleep. My brain just wouldn't shut up. It was like after I went snowboarding, my brain seemed preoccupied with what it had seen, and getting its driving mucles back. I got my eight hours, but the next day I felt shattered. Piers had been to SF before, so he was our tour guide for the day, so after our hearty breakfast (Croissants? Porridge? Toast? Proper hostel breakfast that) we hit the streets into beautiful sunshine. It was a little windy, but we didn't care. First stop China Town. It was basically a posh version of Vancouvers china town, but slightly bigger. I wasn't as impressed. No lizards on sticks. No dried jelly fish. No herbal medicine. Just lots of camera and souvenir shops. It didn't even have that many chinese people in it. Ah well. We popped out of china town and landed in the pier district. We sat on some lawn for a while, I  became a bit obsessed with photographing some seagulls having a bath. We dozed a little bit, then headed down to Pier 39... which was a bit like a condenced and americanized version of blackpool. We hit up the arcade, but it was expensive and rubbish, so we didn't play any games, and ate an expensive hot dog to some how try and compensate. After that we decided to head downtown to have a look at the shops. We found an urban outfitters and looked at shoes and stuff in there, took a photo of the huge pyramid building thats downtown. Next I decided I wanted to look around Haight street, San Frans famous bohemian/hippy district. We started to walk down the road towards the street... and the streets started to get what you might call "dodgy". We walked by as a drunk guy pulled another very drunk guy of his chair and onto the floor, and Rosie got a few inappropriate calls... except they were so lame that they weren't offensive in the slightest. Piers thought they were shouting to him for some reason. After a while Piers wanted to turn back, so we went to a small park and decided what to do. Me and Rosie decided we wanted to continue onwards, and Piers headed back to the more commecial shopping district. We carried on our walk, found Haight street, and there was nothing on it. Just lots of houses. Confused we headed back, through another residential district of San Fran, to the hostel. Ate a delightful $5 meal that the hostel puts on, that evening we were all still shattered, so we stayed in, I wrote the previous blog entry, then we headed to bed fairly early, as Piers had booked tickets for Alcatraz the next day, and that involved an early start.

Up! Breakfast! Out the door by 9! Got outside, still sunny, but a lot more windy than the previous day. We headed back down to the Pier, found were the boat left for Alcatraz, collected our tickets and began the boarding for the 10am boat just in time. After having our photo taken behind a picture of alcatraz that they wanted to us to pay $20 to buy later (honestly, with modern cameras why would you do that? Your about to be on the bloody island that's in the picture, plus it makes it look like your hovering over the sea like a touristy version of Jesus.) The boat set off, and we could see the golden gate bridge clearly in the background, as we approached the island, and got a chance to get a few cracking photos of the island as we approached. On arrival we ejected ourselves from the boat and listened to a long lecture on the do's and don't's of the island... I was begginging to wonder if this would be any good. We headed up the slope towards the prison, and decided we should do the audio tour. We collected our hand sets, put on our trendy 90's style headphones and hit the prison. The tour was epically, intensely, good. Its full of interviews with the prison guards, and even more amazingly, some of the prisoners. As you walk through the prison the headset would play authentic sounding prison noises to give you the atmosphere, then would talk you though various parts of the prisons history, along with throat cutting sound effects and screams were necissary. I new about the attempted escapes on Alcatraz, what I didn't know about was when some prisoners took over the prison, which was followed by a 3 day stand off with the military, or the time the prisoners tried to revolt in the kitchen after they got fed of being served awful pasta 3 weeks in a row. Or how the prison guards families lived on the island. They are currently trying to raise money to fix Alcatraz, as its falling to pieces, but in a way I kinda hope that doesn't happen, all the rust, concrete walls falling to pieces, and seagull poop just give the place extra atmosphere. Also, I'm kinda embarissed to say that the place gave me flash backs of the prison level on computer game Half Life 2, which was obviously based on the prison. To the point that I told Piers I'd had a gun fight in that very recreational yard, ahhh happy memories. The rest of the prison was closed off because of the gulls breeding, so we returned to the boat and headed back to the main land. It was really starting to get VERY windy, and cold. Next we were heading to an outdoor pool, or at leasts that we thought it would be, it turned out to be a small harbour area, that looked very choppy. We defonatley weren't swimming in it. We sat on some grass for it a bit, but it was freezing, so we decided that the answer to this problem was to keep moving. Next we headed up Lafayette park to have a look around the famous tower. We climbed to the top of the hill and looked out over San Francisco, the view was pretty darn impressive, you could see downtown clearly, and out over the harbour, and most of the 4 miles of the bay bridge. We sat up at the tower for a bit, because the wind wasn't as bad, and we could actually feel the sun. After we had been up the tower we decided it was home time, and headed back to the hostel for another cracking $5 meal. Meal ingested we decided a cheap night was in order, and went to the hostels cheese and wine night, which turned out to be one glass of wine, and some humus. I watched a bit of a film, and I'll be honest, I can't remember rest of that evening, so it probably involved an early night, oh, let say I read a book.

Our final day in San Fran! :-( We got up fairly late, ate some Breakie, then decided to do the Hostels free tour. Our tour guide turned out to be an English girl, who was living in the country illegally, and getting paid cash in hand... I had reservations about this tour. But this was unnecessary, as the tour turned out to be really good. Maybe I should stop having so much reservations about stuff. She showed us some of the famous houses at San Frans central square.. well were they should have been, as they all burned down after the huge earthquake in 1906. Next she showed us the original Fairmont hotel, which was incredibly luxurious, and has its original 1900's decor. After that we headed to the tram museum, which houses the machine that makes the trams move, its essentially a giant motor that pulls the cable that is berried under the street. After that she took us to the Lavaett tower, and even though we had already been there, she improved things by actually knowing what we were looking at, and the history of the tower. Next stop China town, again she told us tons if interesting stuff about this China town, for example, its were all of the prostitution was centred, and a prostitute was expected to live no longer than 8 months, the people of San Fran treated the Chinese very badly, and the reason this China town looked so nice, was because they actively decided to make it a tourist attraction after the earthquake, as a way of repaying the Chinese for treating them like shit for the last 50 years. With the tour over, me and Rosie decided to head back to Haight Street, turns out we were going the right direction, it was just another mile down the road. This time we got the bus. The street was full of hippyish bohemian stuff as expected. I had been talking about getting my lip pierced for a while, and Rosie dragged me into a tattoo studio to get it done. Even then, I had reservations, so we decided to play a game of credit card roulette. If Rosies card accepted the $50 bill, then I had it done, if not we walked out... it only bloody accepted it. The gentleman who did the piercing was pretty good, the pain was minimal, it only was a bit like getting an injection. It really didn't hurt that much. After that we heade back for the final $5 meal, then it was time for the pub crawl organized by the hostel. :-D We donned our glad rags and met the others for the awkward first meeting outside the hostel. Pretty much everyone on the tour was English. We boarded a bus, and headed to the first bar... an Irish bar well away from the central district, it turns out our tour guide was Irish, and living here illegally, and trying to get in with the bar owners by bringing hostelers to the bars. The first bar was dead, we had our first drink, and got to know the other people, there were 3 lads from around Stockport, an Ozzie and German guy who had met in a hostel, and been traveling together since, and a random assortment of guys and gals from other minor European states. The second bar was a little busier, but had a DJ who was old enough to be my dad, but still thought he was "Cool" always a dangerous combination. I think he might have played Cotnie Joe.  The drink was starting to take affect, and it was becoming even easier to talk to our new comrades. I don't remember much of the last bar, except the music was much better, Rosie was trashed, me and Piers had an epic heart to heart. We got the bus back, and after being fascinated by the twinkling of some paving slabs, ended up being sat in the hostel kitchen talking with the English guys for another hour. In bed by 3. Good times.