Ok here's San Fran part 2 and we're back to me (Sara) writing the next couple of blogs so hopefully we can catch up a bit!

The second half of our week in San Francisco was seriously action packed. About midweek we took a cable car (like a tram but with the cables inside the road) up some impossibly steep hills (quite scary because the cable cars are really old and have manual brakes) to a street nickname crooked street. It's real name is Lombard Street and it's...well...crooked! I think basically the hill is so steep that it would be dangerous for cars to just drive straight down so they made it sort of like a ski slalom. It's quite cool to see and cars queue up for ages just to drive down it and there were loads of tourists taking photos. I feel sorry for the people who live there! Oddly enough the road next to Lombard Street was just straight down and it was amazingly steep! As we walked up to it we saw a car waiting at the top and it looked like it was going to drive off the edge of a cliff! We also made our way across to Coit Tower which had really good views of Lombard Street and over San Francisco.

We saw an advert for renting bikes and thought it would be cool to cycle the Golden Gate Bridge since even though we'd seen it loads of times already, we hadn't yet been on it. We went to get our bikes (proper mountain bikes this time) first thing in the morning and they gave us a map and showed us a good route to take utilising all the spacious bike lanes. I don't think we thought this through properly. It's mighty hilly!! I thought we could avoid most of them but Bryan wanted to take the more challenging "scenic" route which nearly killed me! I'm not going to lie I did have to get off and walk my bike up a lot of hills. Still we did see some nice things on route the bridge including Golden Gate Park and some pretty Victorian houses called the Painted Ladies. When we got to the bridge Bryan was gutted because the infamous fog was hanging over most of the bridge. We'd heard it's usually foggy over the bridge but everytime we had seen it so far it had been clear blue skies. So sods law when we actually want to go on it it's foggy. Well we did it anyway and it was not an enjoyable experience! The wind was very aggressive I thought I was going to be blown over the bridge and it was absolutely freezing. At least we can say we've done it!

But our journey was far from over. We cycled a much less hilly terrain to the nearby town of Sausalito. This was quite a cute, if rather tourist seaside town. It seemed everyone had cycled over here and when I looked at some of the fatties I had to wonder how they managed it when I struggled. Well no time to hang around too long, we had a quick burger freshly grilled and headed off again. We really wanted to see the redwood trees which are famous in this area and so huge you can have 10 people holding hands around one tree trunk. We were told the nearest place to cycle to was Mill Valley so we headed in that direction. By this stage the cycling was far from enjoyable. I was exhausted and my bum was so sore that every slight bump or stone in the road was agony! But I knew I'd regret not seeing them. When we got there it was a little disappointing. Just a bunch of tall but very skinny trees. A lady drove by in her car and asked if we were lost because there was nothing to see around here. I really didn't want to cycle back and we had stopped to try to work out if we could get a bus when an extremely camp man came out of his restaurant to chat to us. He seemed so happy to see us and was really keen on us coming inside for a drink. It seemed like a nice and friendly little town with no tourists so I wish we could have stayed longer but we had to rush back to catch the last ferry and alas no bus. It turns out the ferry was late anyway and it was now evening and absolutely freezing cold so we bought a coffee to try to warm us up. When we got off the ferry in San Francisco I wanted to get a bus back but Bryan insisted it would be quicker to cycle. It was now about 8pm, pitch black, freezing cold and we had no lights on our bikes. To make matters worse the cold was making my thigh muscles cramp up. I was freezing and exhausted by the time we got back and really regretting the whole bike ride and I'm not surprised because we looked up the route the next day and we worked out we cycled 27 miles!!! Of hills!!

We couldn't go to the gay capital of the world without visiting the gay district, Castro. To get there we took the underground for the first time which was nowhere near as nice as China and Hong Kong. To make it worse there was a weirdo fighting all the "demons" in the station (just thin air). As Bryan mentioned before there are so many weirdos here and if you stray off the main road in Downtown then it's seriously scary. Of all the places we have travelled so far I felt the least safe in San Francisco. Anyway we got to Castro and as soon as we stepped out of the underground there were some guys sitting outside at a cafe butt naked! Bryan wanted to take a photo but decided it wouldn't be such a good idea. We wondered around and there were plenty of rainbow flags and kinky gay shops but Bryan was disappointed as it wasn't gay enough for him!

On our last day in the states we decided to hire a car for the day (unfortunately the convertible wasn't in our price range) and take a road trip south on Highway 1 - the coastal road. For me this was absolutely the highlight of San Francisco. The scenery was amazing and the road hugged the coast the whole way. Every corner we turned was a sight worth travelling to on its own with the rugged cliffs and amazing waves. We found a place to stop overlooking the beach and eat our picnic we had bought from Safeway. Unfortunately the wind had a chill to it so we ate it inside the car but we still had a great time. Some pelicans flew right in front of our car while we ate. Even more amazing we were watching a kite surfer going over the waves and just after he went passed a particular spot a whale popped up over the waves. It was incredible and we felt so lucky we spotted it because if we hadn't been watching the kite surfer we wouldn't have noticed it. On the opposite side of the road was Big Basin National Park, one of many national parks in the area and the area was so vast it could only be possible in the States. We had a short walk here hoping to find some larger redwoods but no such luck. Although I did find myself wishing we had done 2 nights on the road trip and camped overnight because it was so beautiful.

We stopped off at a town called Half Moon Bay which had typically old style American buildings and nice little shops and restaurants. We then carried on to Santa Cruz where we were planning to stop for a while but we drove through the beach area and it was a bit crazy with theme parks and roller coasters all over the place. We decided to just carry on going to Monterey Bay in case we ran out of time. When we got there we were lucky enough to find a parking spot with plenty of money still in the meter so we didn't have to pay anything. Monterey was quite cool but a little like Pier 39 with all the shops and restaurant. Bryan got an enormous ice cream so I decided to be healthy and get frozen yoghurt instead. However there were so many sweets and sauces to put over it that it didn't end up being so healthy! On the journey back we tried to take a detour through another redwood forest in our quest to find the giant trees. However, the road was so narrow and windy that it was going to take us forever to get back and we were flying out that evening so we couldn't take the risk so took a more direct route back. We got caught in an hour or so of traffic where we started to panic but fortunately we made it back in time.

Initially I wasn't too interested in going to USA and was treating San Francisco as just a stopover. My reasoning for this is my dislike of USA as a whole in terms of their politics and the country's attitude to the rest of the world. However, on an individual basis the people are really friendly (apart from the weirdos) and there are some really beautiful places to visit so I wouldn't write off going back to USA for a bigger road trip.