It begins…

with a 19 MO^%$#&%$#@ *beep beeeeeppp* hour plane ride and a 13 hour pleasant peaceful sleep at a nice hostel in the middle of the downtown district in San Francisco.

*KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK*
“uurrrgghh huh?!”
*KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK*
“urrrhh hmmm” nudge Jess.
nudges Jess, “is that our door”
Jess stands up eyes still shut goes to the door and opens it.
“Nah mate no thanks” she says and goes back to bed.
“Who was that?”
“Room service”
I go back to sleep thinking how strange it is to get room service in a hostel.
*some time later*

*BANG BANG HAMMER HAMMER*
“What the hell?!!”
Both of us wake up and peer out the door. Outside the door across the hall is a handyman fixing a door who turns and smiles at us. I laugh thinking how strange it would be for him, think manuel faulty towers but a handyman, to have an Aussie girl leaning out the door telling him no thanks our door is fine. He must of been so confused he left for 45 Min’s to check with the manager only to get slapped on the head and sent back up.

Moving on we rush down to the kitchen for breakfast only to find out that daylight savings came into effect the night before and we’re an hour late.  Doh!
Still in a before-coffee-daze we step onto the busy sloping streets on San Fran, locals just call it the city, the day is bright with sunny clear blue skies and chilly not too dissimilar to Perth in winter. Rounding a corner in a rush is rag dressed Oliver-esq homeless man yelling “Can anyone spare two grand”. Yup everything is bigger in the US.

Pictures tell a hundred words, so to save my fingers these are their stories:

San Francisco’s architecture and streets are amazing. Avoiding walking up the steep hills is a must, or in my case avoid walking all together. One such way is via trolley car, much cheaper, faster and look pretty much the same as the touristy famous Cable Cars:

Walking the streets you could run into dodgy looking people like this:

The trolley cars run to most popular areas, are reasonably quick and scenic. We ended up more than once at fisherman’s wharf, not entirely by choice, but because I wanted to stop walking and jumped on the closest trolley car. Path of least resistance! Anyway fisherman’s wharf is fantastic, though it is renown for food which wasn’t that tasty especially since I don’t eat seafood. The views of the bay are amazing and on such a spectacular day we decided to hire some bikes and ride across the golden gate bridge:

All this exercise is thirsty work, it was surprising hard to find a decent bar they all seem hidden. The guy at the hostel sent us up to Polk St originally, he main issue is that Polk St is the main cross-dresser/transvestite hang out. I was fine but Jesse felt quite out of place. Once we’d figured out where not to go,we found where to go and discovered the cute Gold Dust Bar with live music. Lots of Beatles, Credence etc. tunes. Some Texans next to us tried telling us how rubbish this music was and how much better the music is in Texas. Luckily I was side-tracked by the fact they bought me a beer and didn’t question what exactly was better than the Beatles.

Check out the video below of the Gold Dust Lounge:

Last but not least was the adventure to Ocean Beach. On the Muni(Train/Tube) Plum went around for 30mins asking people if they could SHOW HIM THE MUNI. The whole idea was to hire surfboards and go surfing. Unfortunately we turned right instead of left and walked 5 miles to the wrong surf shop. It was actually 5 miles left and by the time we got 3 quarters of the way there it had shut. However the walk, Golden Gate Park and lunch was great.

Ocean Beach, grey and cold looking and about 8ft plus.
Lunch was in this little garden, which is kept neat by volunteers in the community. It was however little for giagantor:

Golden Gate Park is big! And beautiful:

Where we stayed: HI San Francisco Downtown
What we did: Rode around the bridges, CA Wine Tasting, Fisherman’s Wharf, ate lots, Ocean Beach and Golden Gate Park
Best Pub: Gold Dust Lounge

That’s all folks, we’re now off to Houston stay tuned.

P.S Thank you all for the emails sorry if we haven’t gotten back to you.

P.P.S Unfortunately the camera died so photo’s are lacking. I’ll try and put together some of the video’s we have on YouTube over the next few days.

P.P.S Thanks Gordon in advance for the spelling and grammar corrections.

Related posts:

1. Hutchae in Bariloche
2. Vancouver – Week 1
3. Mendo-zzzzzzzzz-a

Homeless man “Anyone got a spare two grand?!” Gotta love the USA.

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Well this is rather straight forward to get to Canada we’re going to need some means of transportation, we decided on going with aeroplanes. Amazing! No great surprise there but through a combination of frequent flyer points we managed to get a one way ticket for $169 and $340 respectively as opposed to the cheapest airfare which was $1400. Now that is cool as a polar bears bum, so for all you Qantas frequent flyers, check the any seat award as well as the classic awards!

 A few annoying things we’ve found:

1. Return tickets are just as cheap if not cheaper than one way tickets.
2.Most Visa’s and even countries where visa’s aren’t required require proof of an onward ticket. And lastly.
3. Most airlines in the USA charge you extra for checking in luggage, surely there is a opportunity here for a courier business to undercut the airlines baggage fees just like the Takuhaibin service.

Later
Hutch

Related posts:

1. North American Travel Insurance
2. USA B1/B2 Visa for Australians
3. Canadian Working Holiday Visa