Our first stop after leaving L.A. was in a town just outside of Santa Barbara called Carpenteria and we stayed in a very nice Best Western hotel for $20 each per night. Many motels and hotels in America advertise cheap rooms in free coupon books and we make it even cheaper for ourselves by travelling as a 4 and staying in the same room. Hopefully this helps towards America being a cheap country to travel.

We stayed just one night in Carpenteria and had a short wonder around picturesque Santa Barbara before I got my first experience on the "wrong" side of the road and car for our drive up to San Francisco.

We took the slower, more scenic route on the Pacific Highway 1 which followed the coast for the majority of the way. Arriving in San Francisco we had no accommodation booked as we were relying on our coupons but, unfortunately, theres a half marathon due and everywhere is either overpriced or fully booked. After an hour of searching we stumble across a motel with vacancies and manage to get the price dropped a little so we can afford it and have some money left over for food! Another bonus with these hotels/motels is that most include breakfast, which we abuse and turn into lunch too, and also wi-fi so we can access free internet.

San Francisco is an amazing city. One of the most likeable yet. The scenery is excellent, the golden gate bridge is stunning, alcatraz is, well, alcatraz and everywhere you turn there is a view to behold. There are huge sea lions in the harbour, massive hills, old style trams tackling the hills and the worlds "crookedest" street. The fisherman's wharf is a great little area to look around and so is downtown with all the big name stores.

One of our nights was spent on the rock! That's right, alcatraz looked after us for few hours. We had to catch the ferry over which gave great views of the city and bridge both there and back and we had a leisurely stroll around the prison listening to all the stories and info on our supplied headsets. A prison is a prison as far as i'm concerned but its the stories that go with it that make it what it is. That and the fact that alcatraz is possibly the worlds most famous incarceration unit!

San Fran is such a breath of fresh air compared to L.A. in many ways but, for me, it's the fact you can walk around after dark without constantly looking over your shoulder or worrying who's walking towards you. We liked it a lot and had 2 nights/3 days to enjoy it.

When leaving the city we travelled over the Golden Gate bridge and we were hoping for excellent views but all we got was the fog! The famous fog! We've had good weather since arriving in the States but on that evening, the fog rolled in over the bridge and we could barely see 10 metres in front! It was fascinating to watch the clouds roll down the hills though!