Tuesday
Early start after an awful nights sleep, with the sound of helicopters and glass bottles being sorted out outside our window!

Started the day of pure travels with a bus to Union Square which took an hour. Then we paid for our Amtrak California pass which will take us to San Francisco, then to Las Vegas (5th) and then to San Diego (9th) and back to LA (14th)! Essentially a 12hr train to San Francisco today though.

Our train was leaving at 10:25 so we got a 6inch subway and caffe latte and headed for the train. The train is huge and double decker and the seats have lots of room! My panda pillow has come in handy for this journey. On this train there is a parlour, cafe lounge cart, shop and sight seeing carriage! We thought there would be wifi but that was lies. So we have played scrabble, trivial pursuit, napped, read, blogged and made a song called Panda your my star on garage band (neil was the creator and composer).

We were planning on getting dinner on the train and the menu sounded good but was $20 each bit of a bump so settled on a sandwich! I got a ham and cheese on wholemeal which for some reason was sweet (bread in America is weird) and dry but I had a whole pack of ham in it. We ate in the sight seeing carriage and shared a fruit salad.

This journey may be long but much better than the greyhound and the views are immense! We have been past beaches, deserts, rivers and towns.

We got off the train in Oakley and got the coach over the bay bridge and got in a cab to our hostel on Isadora Duncan Ave in the centre of theatre land! Still busy at 11pm on a Tuesday. We checked in and dropped are bags and went to find a late dinner. Round the corner Sticky Pot a Thai restaurant nom nom. We ordered satay, sticky rice and green curry and shared. The satay sauce was slightly more coconutty than usual but still yummy and the green curry had string beans, aubergine and another vegetable that I couldn't quite tell what it was but tasted good! Ordering medium spice worked out well as it was a good spice with a kick! Sticky rice was served in my favourite way in a bamboo basket. Couldn't finish the curry so got it to go!

Back at the hostel we were reunited with wifi after a 3 day starvation.