San Francisco is making us feel a bit homesick. The skies are grey and it's a lot colder than the other places we've been to in California; Fisherman's Wharf is like an English seaside resort with tonnes of tacky attractions and amusements; and today we stumbled across a shop selling British food - Galaxy chocolate, Heinz beans, Digestive biscuits, decent bacon etc etc. We spent ages walking round stroking packets of basic food items just because they reminded us of home. We've only been gone six weeks so god knows what we'll be like after several months!

We've packed quite a lot into the couple of days we've been here. Yesterday we walked the Golden Gate Bridge, climbed the Coit Tower to get a birdseye view of the town, watched cars navigate the world's crookedest street, strolled along Pier 39 and just generally walked around San Francisco taking it all in.

Today we took a brief look at the free Cable Car Museum, hired a rowing boat at the lake in Golden Gate Park (neither of us can row so this was rather amusing), and spent some time browsing the thrift shops along Polk Street. The highlight of the day was seeing the confusion on Jak's face when he was discretely asked if he was 'waiting for a test' whilst he was waiting outside a fitting room for me. It emerged that he was being offered a free HIV test, which made sense when we realised the shop was called 'Out of the Closet'. Jak was a bit miffed that they thought he might be gay and made lots of macho noises about waiting for his girlfriend but I thought it was pretty good that tests are so readily available.

Tonight we wandered through Chinatown and Little Italy, which are both really near our hostel, and are now relaxing with a drink. We're visiting Alcatraz tomorrow and are both looking forward to it. Hopefully the live band playing outside our single glazed window will stop when we want to sleep...