I'm finally here and I mean that in two ways; one, I am actually in San Francisco; two, I'm UP - TO - DATE with my blog entries, sorry that it's take me a long time, especially sorry to you nana as I know you like to read these, not long till I'm home now!
Well San Francisco is full on cool, its an American city where there is decent public transport and you can actually walk! Well I arrived about mid afternoon and made my way into downtown towards my hostel for the night. The hostel was okay, they put be in a dorm room with one other guy which doesn't really help if your trying to find people to go out and explore the city with. Any how I dumped my bags and went for a bit of a wander around the downtown area; I also gave Cynthia a call to see if it were okay for me to come out and say hi! I headed out to see Cynthia, Sami, Catherine and Elizabeth for a spot of dinner before heading back to the hostel for the night. I lucked out big time as Cynthia said it was okay for me to stay with them whilst I was in San Francisco!
I spent the next week or so checking out what SF had to offer, walking the streets through the different boroughs, Mission, Castro, Haight and Ashbury, Presidio, North Beach, Golden gate Park. Each one was cool for its own reasons. I visited the book shop in which Jack Kerouac was said to hang out; walked the "Hippy" streets of Haight/ Ashbury; Checked out China town and the crooked-est street; boated over to Alcatraz (very cool), went for a night out with Sami to The Mission listening to some uber cool jazz (Jazz Mafia); spent a day with Cynthia and the Girls around Muir Woods (HUGE Redwoods!) and the North Bay and best of all ate some rather nice food! I had a great time in San Fran just relaxing, it was also great to see Cynthia and her family as I had not seen her since I was about 8!
While I was in the area I also made the effort to get out too Yosemite National Park. It was a complete pain to get out there, a day of travel each way but boy was it worth it. This place is amazing, what made it even better that it was covered in snow. I met a guy called Egor, from Serbia, in the hostel who went walking with me around the national park. We started to walk up to the top of Yosemite Falls (5th largest in the world according to them!) but Egor had to walk back down as he was wearing trainers, not the best in deep snow (thigh deep in places)! I decided to catch up with these two guys who were in front of us so that I was not making it up there alone. It was a pretty hard slog but boy were the views worth it, right across the valley to half dome and well as the 1000ft or so to the valley floor! They way down was far simpler though, I donned my water proof trousers and practically slid the whole way down!
Well after a megga tiring day I headed back to the hostel before making my way back to San Fran for one more day before heading out to Portland, Oregon. The last day was spent walking over the Golden Gate Bridge!
Next... Portland on a train, not such a great Idea!
Adios
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