The interesting thing about travelling from Auckland to San Francisco (via LA) is the novelty of flying out in the afternoon of one day and arriving in the morning of the same day. Despite both of us being shattered we struggled to sleep on the plane so arrived at the hotel about midday exhausted. Much to our annoyance we were told that our hotel rooms would not be ready until at least 2pm... Ugh... Still we did eventually check in and have a nice walk around fishermans wharf and ended up in a fine mexican. Still fighting sleep we also made our way to pier 39 which had a mixture of shops and restaurants but of more interest the sea lions. It was good to watch them lazing around or bickering with each other before heading back for an early night.

The next day we decided to go on a walk around the city. We firstly wandered through Little Italy passing the various Italian restaurants. The street lamps were marked out with the colours of the Italian flag. We then continued through china town and ended up in Union square where I made the mistake of walking past Macys. Steph insisted on going inside and before I could say "I need a beer" she was buying the entire sports department!

We then found ourselves in something of a dodgy area, full of dubious looking massage parlours and the like. Stephen wasn't so bothered, surprise surprise but I was glad to get out of there, ridiculous place.

We then decided to tackle a few of the infamous hills and let's just say, I though I was fit beforehand but my calf muscles took a bit of a battering let me tell you. Still we got a great view of the bay from the top of some of the hills and that, coupled with fantastic weather made the pain easier to swallow.

The following day we had our visit to Alcatraz. We were booked on the 11.30 sailing and initially we thought the weather would hold out but it soon became clear that we were going to be in for some rain. The view of Alcatraz on the approach was very imposing and slightly eerie even though it is no longer used as a prison. We disembarked and made our way up the quarter mile incline to obtain our headphones. Once these were in place we were guided around the cell blocks and former officer quarters as we listened to former guards and prisoners tell us their stories of their time on the "Rock". We thoroughly enjoyed the time there. As we waited for the boat to turn up the rain picked up to pretty much torrential, we struggled in the queue to keep dry and hoped the boat would turn up soon. When it did we were annoyed when one of the crew explained that we could not board due to a medical emergency on board. Apparently another boat would be on it's way in about half an hour. Not great news in the circumstances. We didn't want to lose our place in the ever growing queue so stood our ground. Surprisingly we were then told we could get in the boat which we did as quickly as possible. However, there was then a good 30 minute delay as 2 emergency cases were dealt with by the fire and ambulance service who had arrived by boat'. Bizarrely the 2 injured passengers were then stretchered onto our boat rather than the fire boat and we all had to squash up to accommodate them. There were some very annoyed people on board. One German guy demanded a free pretzel for the inconvenience!

That night we found an Irish bar with a Spanish guy hosting karaoke, bizarre! We sat in the back and hoped to be ignored whilst snickering at some of the awful attempts to sing. Stephen was dying to sing Blondie's "rapture". Fortunately he quickly realised that it was better to laugh at others than be intimidated!

The following morning we woke with sore heads and were greeted with torrential rain. We decided to do something different so went to Mr Ridleys Believe it or not museum. This wouldn't have been my first choice but it was this or the wax works so was the lesser of two evils. It actually was fairly interesting and we got to do a mirror maze which was slightly panic inducing when we kept hitting mirror walls and couldn't find our way out! Later that afternoon we headed back to pier 39 to a wine tasting room, Stephen trying 3 reds whilst I tried 3 whites. Good tasting measures though!!

Our last day in San Fran was a good one. The sun was shining and we decided it was time to tackle the Golden Gate Bridge. Initially we had thought we would cycle it but that wasn't ambitious enough so we walked instead. It was about 5 miles to the bridge, 1.5 miles across and then about another 3 to Sausalito, a lovely historic town on the opposite side of the bay. We grabbed an ice cream after some lunch and chilled out in the sun for a few hours before getting the ferry back. It was a great day but managed to get very sunburnt.

The following day we picked up our car, a Toyota Reva which was supposed to be equipped with sat nav. Unfortunately we were told that there was no GPS but not to worry as the roads are really straightforward and we couldn't really go wrong! Clearly they don't know us very well so we legged it over to the nearest Radio shack and bought one which can also be used in the UK so will be handy for my car.