Advertisement
Published: March 16th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Pizza!
We were majorly impressed with the pizza slices at Pizzelle...although we were starving by this point so any food would have looked like heaven on a plate to us. And thus has our first day in the U S of A progressed.
Well, ok. Before that. Following fond farewells at the airport - from our families and from the toilet at our gate (seriously, it thanked us and asked us to come again, has the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation started shipping toilets to Earth now?) they announced that random bag checks would take place while boarding. Juliet tried for the triple, having already been stopped at two out of two check points, but this time was allowed through.
Jenny seriously doesn't recommend sitting next to smelly people on the plane (and I don't mean Ju!) but inflight entertainment was otherwise passable. Juliet discovered that she is amongst those who are physically incapable of sleeping on planes, and threw intermittent bleary and jealous looks at sleeping Jenny's contented be-masked visage. Jenny was oblivious. Mostly. In between movies at least. (At least 30 movies to choose from! Juliet found her sleepless hours at least passed usefully!)
We were mightily impressed by the charming young US customs officer who checked that we weren't international money launderers, or bringing in illegal quantities of Marmite, and apologised profusely for the inconvenience. San Francisco
Parking In San Francisco
While we were charmed by everything we saw, I am sure the locals thought we were utterly strange for photographing perfectly normal street parking (!) airport is alllllright.
Following this promising arrival, we decided to brave the fates, take our destinies into our own hands and catch public transport into the city centre to find our hostel. The kind man at the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station gave us comprehensive instructions for catching our train but failed to mention the 98 degree slope when he told us we'd have to walk 'up' Montgomery Street. 4 sore legs and 2 tired backs later we arrived at our hostel room and progressed onto more important things.....pizza! $3.50 for pizza and a soda can't be bad, especially when the slice of pizza is the size of a dinner plate. But anyway back to the man at the BART station....
To tip or not to tip? So ok, we cleverly got the hang of subtley leaving a couple of dollars for the waitress after lunch. But the guy at the station? And the receptionist at our hostel? Are they mortally wounded that we didn't make with the cash? And more to the point, how exactly do you go about handing someone cash without feeling like a 70's gangsta bribing a cop? We are genuinely wondering,
Coit Tower
We climbed to the top of Telegraph Hill (more stairs!) to see Coit Tower. Christopher Columbus is standing in front there, he has a great view of the Bay - with Alcatraz in the middle, a bridge on each side, and the Stars and Stripes whipping in the wind... and we can't exactly ask the receptionist. Suggestions are more than welcome. In the meantime, we're not coming back here in the immediate future so we'll just pretend we're ignorant of tipping culture altogether, at risk of sour looks. So far mightily impressed with American customer service, however. Despite the surrealism of the fact that
everyone has American accents!! So we walked around the city for a lovely couple of hours. The sun was shining, the Americans were singing, our calves were thoroughly exercised and Alcatraz was glowing with romantic ambiance beneath the American flag billowing gracefully from the top of Telegraph Hill. Ooops apologies for overuse of adjectives, but it was just that kind of afternoon. Fuelled by our splendiferous pizza slices we cavorted around the city like gleeful school children who haven't slept for 36 hours (apart from jenny, a little).
Ju says: Our Hostel has The Onion! Weekly!
Jenny says: Smile and nod
Alright so back for superlong hot showers (bliss!) and Mexican dinner for free! Yum! And we got chatting to some lovely Scootish lads and lasses who filled us in on the best places to go clubbing in London and how to
Christopher Columbus' view of the harbour
In which we admire a billowing US flag (these are all over the place so will probably inadvertantly feature whether we photograph them or not) fluttering over Alcatraz in the distance. scam car rego's in the US (don't worry mums and dads, we won't!!), along with recommendations to permanently relocate to Glasgow and to queue for at least 45 minutes outside of anywhere before its worth actually going into. This is a strange idea to us but we make allowances for cultural differences.
Having tired our jetlagged selves out, we will now sleep and plan to visit the modern art museum tomorrow and find more $3.50 meals to recommend to you.
Love,
Jenny and Ju
Advertisement
Tot: 0.19s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 7; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0511s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb
Gareth
non-member comment
Sounds fun :)
Glad you made it safely and busying yourselves already. England is freezing even if it's suppose to be Spring. Should warm up by the time you get here though. Will check back again. These are a great laugh.