We've hit the road!

So this is the first installment from our travels! It is Day 3 and we've just arrived in Livermore, where I used to live as a kid. We spent the last three days in San Francisco, which was amazing. It's a fantastic city by day (and probably by night but our hostel was in a pretty dodgy area and we had severe jetlag!), and the weather has been beautiful. Sun, sun and a light breeze- rather nicer than the English winter! Walked for miles, covering lots of the city, including the main tourist sites. And of course we rode a cable car.

Allie, I thought of you on Fisherman's Wharf and the Ghiradelli Factory. And Rach I thought of you when we saw an enormous shoe shop, with 60% off everything for their 'semi-annual' sale!

Alex found driving a little daunting, as the car was parked on the side of the road with hazard lights on in San Francisco for us to drive away. Needless to say, he tried to change gear a few times, but drove us brilliantly all the way to Livermore (and I amazingly found where we needed to go without going wrong once!).

Looking forward to a good nights sleep tonight. We certainly had to adapt fast to travelling accommodation, with our hostel. It was very downmarket (but you get what you pay for!), with a very smelly room and interesting stains on the sheets. We had our silk sleeping bags so that was fine (bar the stabbing springs!) and at least the door locked so we felt reasonably safe. The guy last night snored very loud and talked in his sleep so we are now very tired with puffy eyes! We even went out by 8am this morning to get away from it! But enough moaning, the city is fantastic and we've had a great start to our trip.

Now we have a car it should get even better as we wont have to lock our bags to our beds (just press a button on our key!) and wont have to repack everything carefully every time we want something from our packs.

On a different note, a big thanks to our parents for all the help in getting us off on this trip, and for taking us to the airport. We really appreciated it (and I miss the meals cooked for me!).

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