We headed for Fort Mason in San Francisco, which is the site of an old military base and hospital. They have a hostel there now in one of the old barracksy type buildings. It is at the bay end of the city and we'd decided to base ourselves there for a couple of days, so that we could go and visit Alcatraz, see the Golden Gate Bridge and all that malarky. That evening we ate at an Italian place on Pier 39 (where you could still hear the sea lions honking...the...

The following morning we got up to find that Big Dave had already gone out. We had big plans to get ourselves back into the city to do some more sightseeing and Dave had suggested we get the Bart (a bit like the Tube) rather than drive. He'd given us driving directions to the station (which seemed fine at the time, but once on the road were kind of vague) and so we set off. When we eventually got to the station we realised that we didn't have a clue what ...

 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 h...

The hostel in San Diego proved to be just fine. The beds were very squeaky and it was in the main touristy area so it wasn't the quietest place in general, but it was clean and safe and they have become our main priorities! The staff at the hostel were much more friendly than in LA and they organise tours and activities and stuff. The breakfast was free, but you had to cook it yourself so we're now dab hands at making American style pancakes for breakfast...

I think that at the end of my last entry we were heading, in a bit of a hurry, out of San Luis Obispo and the lecherous advances of Buster...we'd decided to head up the coast to a place called Monterey as this would give us an opportunity to visit Hearst Castle and, from there, drive up the Big Sur, one of the most famous roads in America, if not the world. The coastal highway to Hearst Castle is beautiful, I really enjoyed the drive and we arrived at th...