Hi everyone **waves** hope you are all okay! As you all know we arrived here safe and have yet to be deported despite a lengthy spanish inquisition at US customs!! (I think it was the england shirts hehe). The hostel is really pleasant as far as hostels go, our first room mate was Nadia **waves at Nadia if you're reading this-good luck with the military training :) **, then came Shinaid from london :) the first english person we've met since we came here. Both are really canny and seem to tolerate me and Ali well :) despite our crappy jokes!hehe (they do seem to laugh at us a lot rather than with us hehe). I was nominated to have the top bunk the whole way through the holiday 'cos Ali is adament that she'll fall off the top even though it has bars LOL. We spent our first day in fat stan's disco biking the golden gate bridge and beyond to Salsalido which is a really pretty fishing village. We rode 18 miles all in all, singing doe a deer across the bridge while acting like the vontrap family from the sound of music :) attracting lots of attention from Japanese tourists! We then rode to the exploratorium and the palace of fine arts (from the film the rock!). On the night we had a wander out to find an Italian restaurant....this was not a pleasant experience with lots of homeless people and gangs on the street making lude, aggressive and unnecessary comments that made us feel quite intimidated! We survived though :) We had two new american room mates who strangely arrived at 8pm said hi, brough their stuff into the room at 2am, then went back out for an hour at 5am and were gone when we came back from breakfast!!!! It was all very very strange. The second day we went on a super sight seeing tour and experienced fishermans wharf, china town (scary place!), presidio (army base), the sea cliffe, golden gate park, union square and the financial district...and then went on to Alcatraz 'the rock' tour. Alcatraz was as you'd expect, quite confined and unbearing...oh and really really smelly! The weather has been really nice despite san francisco being the coldest city that we are going to visit! We spent this morning shopping at all the big department stores at union square...macy's, saks fith avenue, bloomingdales etc... and bought ourselves some really pretty dresses for Vegas :) it was very pretty woman esq trying on at least 10 gorgeous dresses that were 1/3 of the price they would be in england! We then got onto a cable car which is an experience in itself with so many people crammed into the smallest of spaces for what seems to be an eternity abd is really only 5 blocks LOL. We made our way to the Golden Gate Park....spending the afternoon and early evening tanning ourselves, playing footy with and chatting to homeless hippies in the park! All we're very pleasent despite being high on weed! The famous haite street was full of shops that were still stuck in the 60's with punk rockers and hippies all over the place... this was the most tolerant, friendly and relaxed place we have been to in the city so far...and if we had more time we would definately have spent more in the golden gate park. We were even invited to go to a beach bonfire party but declined 'cos we had plans with our room mates :( Anyways tomor we are off to Yoseminie national park then on sunday we travel to LA....although San Fran will be greatly missed! Photo's will follow when we find a computer that will allow us put them on **grrr** .....trust me, you'll have a laugh...we look rank on most of them! he he Lots of love, *****Jane and Ali***** P.S. We're gonna come back hippies for sure :) :) :) hehe