San Francisco

We arrived in San Francisco (SF) in late afternoon and were taken to our room and told there was tea and cookies in the parlour. How very english! We then set off in search of a bar showing the Superbowl which is easier said than done in a strange city.

Anyway we found a bar with it on but there only seemed to be one guy watching on his laptop and the waiters. There was only 10 minutes left by the time we arrived. New England Patriots scored to take the lead and the guy was shouting at his laptop criticising the defence then New York Giants scored the winning touchdown to end New England's dreams of an unbeaten season and he was whooping like Americans do shouting "This is not an upset! Yeah." I didn't like to point out to him he was wrong. Amazon had already begun taking pre orders on the DVD and book of New England's perfect season and i'm told it was the biggest Superbowl shock since Superbowl III (this being Superbowl XLII) so i'm thinking this guy was wrong!

After the excitement had died down we had a meal there too and then found a jazz club called Biscuits and Blues. There was Jazz, alcohol, and a pretty waitress from Yorkshire which made me think of home a bit. It was a good night and first impressions of San Francisco were that it is a pleasant city.

Monday 4th February - There was tea and croissants for breakfast then we took the cable car (tram) to the coast and from there decided on a boat trip to the island of Alcatraz, the former prison, on which a number of films have been made. The weather was gorgeous but the sea was choppy making it easy to see why no one succeeded in escaping from the island (allegedly).

Kate then decided we should walk back to the hotel for tea and biscuits. This is where we found out that SF is probably the hilliest city in the world. We must've walked about 20 blocks with about 15 uphills and 5 downhills. We got the bus in the future.

In the evening we went in search of a bar which was on a flat street but it looked dark and dull so we went to a seemingly more happening place called "The Outsider" after being lured in by the sounds of Ricky Martin. I was ID'd at the bat which caused confusion because the pretty bar girls didn't know where the date of birth was on my driving licence and she didn't believe I was 25 because I looked like a "young boy". I took this as a compliment. A very camp man called Jon then introduced himself to me and danced round me holding the top of his trousers. While this was happening, the old man sat next to Kate told her he was "67, American, and horny". She then went to the restroom (toilet) and Jon was just coming out of the ladies! Finally, we met some fairly normal people in two Austrians and a German so I chatted with them for a bit about soccer (football) as they had heard of Leeds United and I was telling them how rubbish they now are! It had just got too weird for me though so we left after one drink but it was all good fun.

Tuesday 5th February - We walked to the Golden Gate Bridge (pictured) and then halfway across it. Again the weather was excellent and it's easier to see the day in pictures rather than write about. They're all on my Facebook profile. We then did some more walking and went up the De Yoong Tower seeing a birds eye view of the city.

In the evening it was Super Tuesday results time for the presidential candidates which was on the news all night in pubs. We did a pub quiz in the Elixir and got quite drunk. We got 27 out of 63 I think and came last out of the teams that completed it but that's cos we're english! Kate then left her purse in the bar and we missed the last bus back to our bit of town so started walking and after 2 blocks got a taxi who was proud to have rescued us from the SF drug district. Oops! Even so, it still felt safer than LA!

Wednesday 6th February - We'd done everything we set out to do so we just had a steady relaxing day and did an open top bus tour of the city. It was a good and informative tour of a very nice city. We took it easy in the evening as it was an early morning ahead of us.

Thursday 7th February - We got up at 3:15 and left for the airport for our really early flight to Las Vegas. This was my first short flight and was quite pleasant so congrats to United Airlines for that.

So that was San Francisco. A lovely city. Can't say much more than that!