And so it begins...

An hour into the flight a steward makes an annoucement 'can a miss Nicola Mitchell please make herself known to a memeber of the cabin crew'. I had no idea what this was about and begun to worry my entire years wardrobe was still being sat on the tarmac at terminal 3. Thankfully and much to my surprise a pink bottle of moet arrives with a card from my dad, liz and rob wishing me a great year ahead.

After 11hrs we finally arrived at our first destination - San Francisco. We took a cab from the airport to our hostel and checked in. This is Odette and Lauras first time in a hostel, let alone shared dorm and they didnt know what to expect. I assured them it was decent, we dumped our bags and went for a walk. Our hostel couldn't have been in a better location. We are on a hill by fisherman's wharf with a fantastic view of the golden gate bridge and Alcatraz. After a brief walk we turn in for the night....what a long day.

Day 2:

We deceide to buy tickets for the city open top bus tour and tour of Alcatraz.Our boat to Alcatraz isn't until 3.20pm so we hop on the downtown bus tour and take in the sights. The bus commentator Chris is annoying but knowledgeable. He covers the great earthquake of 1906, the fire that burned down half the city shortly after the earthquake and the great goldrush during the 19th century. Im actually surprised at how small the city feels. During the tour we switch to the Haight line and make our way to the hippy area of the city. This is definitely a part of the city I could live. Rustic, non metro, slightly edgy with lots of vintage stores to waste hours in. We only have a 2 hours to spend here to we go "shopping" and have lunch in a puerto rican restaurant/cafe.

Alcatraz: once on the island we head straight to the prison block. You receive a headset audio guide which gives detailed information of the prison, how it was operated, some notorious inmates and stories of breakouts. We spend a couple of hours there.

Day 3;

we leave the hostel early again and head to the golden gate bridge tbus tour. Once we're across the other side we stop to take photos of San Fran before departing for Sausalito nick named sausageville (but not because of the quality of the men). Sausalito is absolutely beautiful and definitely somewhere I could live. The climate is warmer than San Fran, the houses are large and situated on the hill facing San Fran city and bay. Its stunning.

Its approaching lunch time and we decide this is a very good place to find a nice restaurant looking across the bay to have a glass of wine and forget about our 'backpacker budget' (and lifestyle) - after just three days haha. Any excuse!

Our bus tour guide recommended a burger cafe so we swing by there on the way back to the bus and bought a large cheese burger each with fries to share. The burger was delicious mainly because of the ketchup, mustard and gerkin relish used. Back on the bus we return to San Fran and switch to the downtown bus tour again. We wanted to spend more time in Haight Ashbury and the easiest way for us get there was taking the city hop on hop off buses. We knew it would take us well over an hour since we had to make another change in the city centre onto the green line - golder gate park tour bus. once on the green line we ask the guide to drop us off before the park as we'd already been there. He dropped us on Hayes street which meant we had tl walk for 20minutes up some pretty gruelling hills..