Today we visited Alcatraz, what a trip, you have to get a ferry out then you're on your own when you dock. It's a bizarre place, really small but still daunting, the cell block is up at the very top of the rock, it's tiny, at it's busiest it housed 260 prisoners it had capacity for 350 but A block was never used. The history is amazing, it was originally an Army Prison but was shut down because it was to brutal for soldiers, they made it a Federal Penetentiary in the 50's, it shut in 1963 and as far as [View Full Entry]

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We had an interesting start to today with Fiona frightening the life out of some poor wee Indian dude she walked in on in the toilet, to be fair I think she got the biggest scare, the whole floor was woken up by their united screaming, I was laughing to myself in bed, she came running back into the room with her arms waving, you had to see it...... The story goes that she just walked into the open toilet and the light was off, this wee chap jumped up from the pan waving his arms about, Fiona stood there screaming [View Full Entry]

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Nothing to report for here as we spent 22 out of 24 hours in our bed, managed to make it out for a couple of hours to get some breakfast/lunch/dinner in the form of burgers. Back to the hostel armed with chips and biscuits we watched the only TV channel we've got in out room (ABC) and the Rose Bowl Game, another college football match between University of Texas and Michigan State. I can't believe we slept all day and night and It was an early rise for me this monring (the 2nd), about 5am as I write all these diary [View Full Entry]

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As they say here, we were up early for breakfast and out by 9am, it was glorious day, about 20 degrees, we had planned to do loads today and first on the agenda was Lombard Street, "The crookedest street in USA" as it markets itself, you've seen in on the telly, a windy street of right angles that cars que up to drive down. The walk up to it is mental, we felt like we were going to fall backwards it was that steep. The street itself is small, and didn't look as impresive as I remember on TV, there were [View Full Entry]

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Today started with the free breakfast as usual, we were meant to be going to the College Bowl final today but it was $60 a ticket!! It's the equivilant of Napier V Abertay, granted played in front of 60,000 punters but there was zero danger I was going to be allowed to blow our budget on a bunch of students throwing a ball about so we decided to take a wander into town. As we got into Union Square it started to batter down with rain, when it rains here it does it in style, we wandered in and out of [View Full Entry]

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After a decent but brief sleep we were awake at 5am on Wednesday, the hostels free breakfast opens at 7am so we were first in the que for that. The meals are in a big ballroom with a kitchen on the side, bizarre set up but works well. Plenty of juice, tea/coffee, bagels, fruit and that, filled up then headed out for our first day on the Bay. We took a walk down through North Beach to Fishermans' Wharf, went through Telegraph Hill, a really nice area of San Francisco, loads of trendy houses and those mental streets you see on [View Full Entry]

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We left home at 07:00 on Tuesday (December 28th) and arrived in San Francisco (via Heathrow) at 18:45 local time, some 20 hours later, the Edinburgh - London flight was a nightmare, Fiona was sick at the landing and turned to me and said "I really don't think I like flying", magic I thought, only another 14 flights for a total of 65 hours to go........... The London - San Francisco flight was much better, good meals, 6 decent films and as much free bevie as we could take, the 11 hours didn't excatly fly in but it wasn't as bad [View Full Entry]

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