San Francisco

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I have just gone through the last of our photos from Las Vegas and found some of the foyer at The Venetian, hope you like them as much as we liked staying there. I have also included photos of Vicki's birthday card from me and some souvenirs, including Vicki's new Vegas Princess coffee cup.

After a really nice light breakfast at our guesthouse we caught the "muni" to downtown San Francisco, the city bus network. Once again we were impressed with the efficiency and ease of use of the transport system in the states. There are so many lessons we could learn from the Americans including how to build roads and transport systems that simply work through to how to politely service customers and make them feel special.

Macy's is another world in it's own world. You could spend all day in here and then not see everything. As I type this I am sitting in the visitor's centre at Macy's using their free wifi. Vicki is off looking at "other stuff". This is our third trip back in to Macy's today. We visited first thing this morning to have a look and buy Vicki her birthday present, a beautiful white watch complete with bling (of course). We then visited the Levi and Nike stores as well as window shopped at many of the brand name high ticket stores.

We then came back for lunch at the Cheesecake Factory, yum, in Macys. A visit to Rochester Big and Tall (for me) for some jeans, shirt and tie and then back to Macy's for Vicki to get some clothes and a bargain.

We are "home" now, our plan was to get the L38 Muni back to near our guest house but as it was 5:30pm by this stage and we had watched one full bus not even stop I hailed a cab and we got dropped off near our guest house. A couple of blocks from the guest house is a small restaurant strip (by US standards), "only" a couple of Italian, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese and Pizza places. We ate at one of the Italian places last night and had some Thai tonight, a very nice meal of Curry Duck and Pad Thai with Prawn.

A short walk back to our guest house and we are now sitting around relaxing. We have been blessed with summer like weather for San Francisco. The top yesterday and today have both been in the high 20's (C) and with the humidity the weather has been Brisbane like. Not even the hint of San Francisco's infamous fog as we saw a very nice crescent moon walking down to get dinner.

Tomorrow we are planning more expeditions of this beautiful city followed by a sunset boat ride to Alcatraz and a night time tour of the island - which is the best time to go according to the travel guides.

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Photos

Union Square
View across to Saks, Tiffany etc.

Graystone Hotel
Love the fire escapes on the outside as seen on tv.