San Francisco - You don't have to be mad to visit here... but it helps!!

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So here we are! We've made it to San Francisco on the first leg of our epic around the world adventure. The day of departure finally arrived and i boarded an early morning coach to Heathrow. I met up with Joe at the airport and after a short delay we were on our way to the sunshine state.

The flight was fairly comfortable with only some mild turbulance, and after 10 hours in the air we landed at San Francisco International. It was a slightly scary feeling to be leaving the airport and not being 100% sure where we were going. We took the Bart underground train into the centre of the city and used our skills as geography graduates to find our way to the hostel.

Its amazing how many homeless people there are in the city. Everywhere you look there is someone begging or asleep in a doorway. It is difficult to avoid them. but when the sun goes down and most normal people go home, nearly everyone you meet is compleatly nuts. Some shout, some sing, one guy was chasing people up and down the sidewalk. Yesterday a homeless man dressed as a bush jumped out at me on Fishermans wharf and scared the living **** out of me! So as the title suggests you don't have to be mad but it helps.

We've spent the first couple of days doing the touristy stuff. Yesterday we walked to Fishermans wharf, and explored the bay area which is a lot further than it looks! and in the afternoon we hired bikes and cycled over the Golden Gate Bridge towards Sausolito.

Today we have been over to Alcatraz and visited the cell blocks that held some of America's most violent and dangerous criminals. The weather has been absolutly fantastic with not a cloud in the sky and temperatures to rival high summer in UK.

At the moment we've been staying in the HI downtown hostel but we think its about time for a change of scenery. We are currently weighing up our options of where to go and what to do but we are pretty sure its about time to move on.

The forest fires that are currently sweeping California are between us and LA where we need to be in two and a half weeks time. And this is putting our plan to travel down the west coast on hold. Instead we think we're going to go to Santa Cruz, LA and then out to Vegas for a couple of days.

The German father and son sharing our dorm offered us a lift up to Yosemite which we were considering. But we decided it would be too difficult to get around with the poor public transport and lack of places to stay. And also the Germans packed up and left whilst we were having breakfast!!... Oh well

However for the meantime we are off to the Golden Gate Park and beach as it seems a shame to be in California and not to have gone to the beach so thats the plan for today.

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