Blogs from Mission, San Francisco, California, United States, North America - page 3

Jan 2012 From Oakland to Vallejo and Napa Valley, breezing along the pacific coast highway to San Francisco, I took in one of my travel dreams courtesy of Facebook My Facebook friends invite me to San Francisco for the last week of my American trip. I spend the seven hour flight from Atlanta to Oakland thumbing through a contingency list of hotels in case we didn’t click: from Facebook page to real life doesn’t always work. By the time the plane spewed us out at Oakland I was feeling so jet lagged that if the Adams family had met me at Arrivals I wouldn’t have flinched. Shouldn’t have fretted though, we hit it off immediately and for the next week they proudly showed me around their bit of the Golden state. They live in Vallejo so ... read more

Hi! We had a good flight to San Francisco and were greeted by Kathleen, who is Anton's mum's cousin's wife (have you got that!!!) She took us back to Malia's house, who is also Anton's mum's cousin, although she was at work so Kathleen let us in and showed us around. Kathleen left us to go and collect her husband, Fred, and bring us back some dinner. We settled ourselves in Malia's lovely 1930's (ish) house. Kathleen and Fred returned with some ravioli and salad for dinner and then Malia came home and we had a lovely evening with them all. After a good sleep in an extremely comfortable bed, Kathleen and Fred took us on a tour of San Francisco. We drove around and stopped at The Palace of Fine Arts and also at The ... read more

Up early, our next stop is San Francisco, as we travel through the winding mountains and the sun glistening through the trees, we see more waterfalls and are sad to leave this beautiful Park! As we travel into San Francisco I cannot believe all the buildings and there stunning architecture, they have a quaint appeal about them. The weather is like an autumn day back home in Melbourne, Victoria as we arrive at our Motel, the room is lovely and after checking in we decide to do some sightseeing. We go for a leisurely stroll down to the Marina and after 30 minutes we arrive at the Marina promenade, the atmosphere is great and there are people everywhere..... street performers, cable cars running up and down, double decker tourist buses, its fantastic. We decide to get ... read more

Not really sure where to start, as we did so much and stayed for a long time in our terms; we got quite settled in the bed bug ridden minging hostel we were in for 9 days! Slight exaggeration as we got moved when I found the bugs although they put friends we met in the same room without sorting the problem out. Anyway less of that and more about San Francisco; We were excited about seeing this place; Liberalism, freedom of speech, quirky people, cool coffee shops and lots of homelessness was what we expected and we got this and a lot more thrown in. Initially, we thought the people we were encountering were a bit bolshy and rude, but after talking with a guy who had lived in San Francisco, our opinion quickly changed, ... read more

Its 10.07am here in beautiful San Francisco and after taking full advantage of the hostels breakfast situation (bagels and coffee plus ice water in PLASTIC RED CUPS) Lucy and I feel just about ready to start the day. Getting through customs was pretty traumatic, and included rapid fire questioning, body scans and a little intimidation thrown in for good measure. "HOW CAN YOU AFFORD THIS" "DO YOU GO TO SCHOOL" "WHAT DID YOU HAVE FOR LUNCH" well maybe not that last one but you get the idea. Dinner consisted of peanut M&Ms and mint choc chip flavoured gum and I am pleased to report an abundance of Owen Wilson films were shown on the plane. Including 'Hall Pass'. Yep. First Royal Wedding related question came before we had even touched down in the USA by a ... read more