Saturday 18 May - Thursday 23 May

San Francisco

(Note to self: Don't lock your jackets in bag using cable ties...You wont be able to get it out when you arrive in San Fran airport late at night and the wind is exhaling fresh and you have nothing to cut cable ties with having just climbed off an airplane. Duh!) WOW - San Francisco - you lived up to my expectations and more! I could live here! Its bloody awesome! Apart from the cold wind that never stops blowing - thats not so much fun. This was the coldest summer I've ever experienced. Man - this city is so picturesque, has such interesting neighbourhoods - you can go from posh to dodge in one block, a bustling harbour where you can see Alcatraz from and has great clam chowder when you're cold and windswept, trendy restaurants and bars (thanks to Mike Daly for a fun night out), is great for cycling about and what's not to love about the Golden Gate Bridge. It is the most photographed man-made structure, so I'm told.

We hired mountain bikes from 'Blazing Saddles' near the Harbour and had such a fabulous day biking across the Golden Gate Bridge, we saw an advert being filmed below the GG Bridge, we then rode across to Sausalito - stopping for the most delicious apple pie, which gave us energy to cycle up to Old Mill Park in the Redwood forest - you can't believe the most amazing houses that people live in amongst the redwoods - we later found out that the owners of Blazing Saddles lived there...go figure - hiring bikes in San Fran can make you a millionaire! We then continued on past the floating houses into Tiburon where we had a much needed lunch of pulled pork sandwiches at Sam's Cafe chased down by a bottle of wine before we had to jump on the ferry back to SF. The sunburn and sore asses were worth the 8 hour bike ride - I highly recommend it!

One other highlight worth mentioning was our stroll through Golden Gate Park and then onto The Haight. We went up the tower at the de Young Museum (for free) and got the most spectacular view of San Fran as well as the park from there. We continued on our stroll up to The Haight - which is cool and queer with a plethora of old hippies, tramps and druggies hanging out, cool music shops (Gary was in his element in Amoeba Music - largest independent music store), vintage stores, tattoo parlours and great eateries for mussels or ice cream. I picked up a fabulous new opal belly ring and Gary got a pair of sunnies for 10 bucks. Wish I could fit more in my bag as I really wanted to raid the vintage stores for some one-of-a-kind finds.

We bought our our 13-inch retina display Macbook Pro in SF - much cheaper than we would have got in Bahrain and went for a Mac initiation lesson the next day - what a fabulous, easy to use little laptop. Nice n light for travelling. Battery life is a bit lacking though. I wish we could've stayed longer as there's so much to see and do in SF - but I know we'll be back.

PS - Forgot to mention the bedbugs at Americas Best Inn - fab location, but after the 3rd night when the bed bugs munched us to pieces, we had to complain - and they gave us a discount. Not worth all the itching and grossness though. Note to self: Purchase silk sleeping bag inner asap.