We headed out of Santa Cruz as early as possible after the nocturnal disturbances of the night before. As I remember it, it didn't take that long, but frankly all the journeys are rolling into one...We had booked into the downtown hostel for the first night of our stay so had to drive right into the centre of the city. We had been told that San Francisco would be the "most European" of the cities we would see, whatever that means, but in all honesty it appeared to be the most like New York of the cities that we had yet visited. The roads were heaving, there were hundreds of pedestrians, and it was the first place where we witnessed road rage. The American drivers thusfar had been so laidback, I thought maybe they took tranquilizers before setting off, but the San Franciscans (if that's what you call them) restored my faith in the good old angry drivers club (of which, as many of you know, I am a fully paid up member!) The hostel appeared to be dead easy to get to, so I confidently navigated Emily into the centre, only to discover that all the roads going crossways are one-way...in the wrong direction. After much frustration, we eventually found ourselves facing the right direction on the right street and found a car park. The parking in San Francisco is notoriously horrendous and we'd heard that they're not scared to tow your car, so we accepted the $29 a day charge and found a space. We had a few hours to kill before we were able to check into the hostel and so wandered around trying to get our bearings, which was surprisingly difficult bearing in mind the city is worked around a grid system. We managed to find the main tram interchange place and Union Square and discovered that the city has amazing shopping...I'm really having to restrain myself! After having checked into the hostel we went out to eat at a place called Lori's Diner near Union Square, which at the time we didn't realise is a chain, with about 9 branches just in San Francisco. I had the stir fry which (without wanting to be too graphic) went straight through me...meaning that my introduction to our 2 room mates was less than ideal, as I flew through the door past them into the bathroom, which freakily we shared with the dorm next door (there was a door on either side.) It meant that there was a big sign on the bedroom side of each door instructing you to knock before entering, and a lock on the bedroom side of the door which you were meant to pull across when you weren't using the bathroom, but no lock on the inside of the bathroom. I've explained that really badly, but I guess you understand? The people in our neighbouring dorm tended to forget to lock their door though, so when you were using the bathroom you were faced with the ever looming threat that you might be walked in on. It was a stupid arrangement, and as you might imagine, in my state of distress, not ideal. Thankfully our neighbours had the sense not to disturb me, but it was dead embarrassing having to go back into our dorm and make polite 'nice to meet you small talk' with our room mates...an American/Phillipino girl who had moved from the mid west somewhere to Los Angeles to do some sort of 'Cosmetics for Disfigured People' course (random, yes) but had hated it because "LA is just, like, a load of suburbs" and so had packed up again and was staying in SF looking for somewhere to settle. She could have represented the US in a high volume talking championship and when she received a call on her mobile, I'm not sure that the person on the other end actually spoke at all. Our other room mate was a German girl who had been with her family in New York where her sister had married an American and then made her way, solo, to SF. It seemed a slightly odd arrangement, but she was sweet and jetlagged, and so made a distinctly pleasant change from the other girl.

I had decided that while in SF we should take advantage of a bit of the culture and so suggested the following morning that we go to SF Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA.) I don't profess to know anything about modern art or to even particularly appreciate it, so we took the audio tour, which does the interpretation for you. It killed a good few hours and made me feel ever so slightly cultured, so I felt justified then going to look at the new Bloomingdales which was opening on Market Street. The place was absolutely packed with people who had more money than they knew what to do with, and we didn't hang around long.

We went to collect the car from the car park and saw that although it had been there 36 hours, we could get away with paying for just one day by saying that we'd lost our ticket...(now keep it quiet, but we've actually done this in all the multistories we've been parked in for any length of time, God strike me down -no doubt all the bad karma will hit us at some stage, but it's saved us more than $100 in parking fees!) We were headed for Berkeley to meet my lovely friend Dave who I'd met in Germany a few years ago and had (foolishly) offered to put us up for a few days. Following his directions we picked him up from the university campus, where he had been studying. He's doing a Phd in Economics (I think!) - I never knew he was such a genius! Anyway, he's the eternal student, although he assured that he hopes to graduate this year and become a professor (can you imagine, Claire??) For now though, he lives with 3 other students, in a proper student house...Dave declared to us that he was going to take the weekend off studying and we were going to "party hard". God help us. In actual fact partying hard in Berkeley is a bit different from 'partying hard' at home. The vast majority of the population is obviously students and so we headed out that evening in the clothes we'd been wearing all day to a favourite place of Dave's - Raleigh's, where we met a selection of his relatively inebriated friends...we had a nice evening and then headed home where Dave put on our favourite Eddie Izzard DVD! Em and I were rubbish though and were falling asleep before we knew it. Dave, the sweetheart, gave up his bed and slept on the settee.

I'm running out of steam here...I think I'll come back and add to this in the next few days to let you know all about the SF sightseeing we did.

Miss you all x