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Published: June 12th 2008
The 7 hour bus trip up to San francisco was pretty boring really as we went on the main highway which was the fastest but definatly not the most scenic route. The most exciting part of the journey was when the bus driver made an unplanned stop and announced that one of his contact lenses had come out! That may have explained why we bumped into something (couldnt see but think it was the back of a car) 10 minutes previously! Anyway we arrived at San Fran bus station about 7.30 and for once we'd done the right thing and booked a motel while we were in LA, only problem was we didnt know how to get there. Luckily a local guy helped us out and sent us off on the right bus and 20 minutes later we were in our motel room. We headed out for food and had our first "Taco Bell" experience- bascially a mexican fast food place, decent burritos for 50p.
After a good night sleep and a continental breakfast (which consists of donuts donuts and more donuts) we went off to book our car for our big road trip across america. We'd done
some research online so had found the company we wanted to use and had a quoted price. We just thought it would be easier to book it in person rather than online. Stupid us! The first office (which was in a really dodgy area) we went to sent us away saying they dont do one way rentals and then the next office said yes we could drop it in New york no problem but when they gave us the quote it was a hell of a lot more then online. When Gra told him the price we had the only thing he said was "That is just not possible sir", so ofcourse we werent going to settle with that so of we went back to the motel to get back online. 10 minutes later our car was booked to collect in a couple of days time and to drop off in NY for the price we originally had. After a wasted few hours we started our time in San Fran again. We walked in the opposite direction of the dodgy china town area, down to the water front where we could see Alkatraz and the Golden Gate bridge. The main
reason for being here was to go over to Alkatraz so the first stop was the office to book our tickets. Luckily they had some left for the next day, with that sorted we spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the water front area with pier 39 and all he toursit shops along the road. Pier 39 was really cool, lots of nice little shops and places to get food. But the higlight was what was in the water beside the pier; hundreds of seals. The seals apparently started to come to the pier years ago after a big earth quake and have never left! On the way back to the motel we saw some guys getting ready to do some street performance so we decided to hang around to see what they were going to do. They turned out to be break dancers who were extremly talented, as you can see on the photo this one guy litterally did a short run up and then did a back flip over 2 guys who had their arms on each others shoulders- well worth waiting around to see.
The following day we had a bit of a
lie in and got down to the pier about 11.30 ready for our boat trip over to Alkatraz. What i didnt realise was that by going to Alkatraz I had to put with with Gra talking like Sean Connery the whole time we were there (you must have seen the film The Rock). The ticket included an audio tour around the prison which was pretty interesting as we got to see where Al Capone and Robert "the birdman" Stroud were imprisoned and even the cells where 3 prisoners escaped through holes they'd made in the wall in 1962 (thus the film "Escape from Alkatraz"). The audio tour was also really hard work basically because of the sheer amount of people in there and they all became completely oblivious to anyone around them when they had head phones on (the good thing about them having head phones on was they couldnt hear what you were calling them when they stepped on your foot! After a few hours we decided our history lesson was over and we got the boat back to mainland. We'd seen loads of food stalls selling clam chowder which looked really good so we treated ourselves to lunch
in the bakery/restaurant where it all started (cant actually remember what the place was called but it was nice so thats all you need to worry about). As you can see from the photo the chowder comes in a bread bowl (saves on washing up) and it was absoloutly delicious- we know realized why everyone was eating it!
On our last day in San Fran we went on a bit of a "walking tour" (as described by the lonely planet), which included a walk up Lombard street, an extremely steep street used in alot films and aparently the crookedest street in the world. This was the day we realized exactly how hilly this city is, by the end of the day our legs were killing us and we couldnt wait to pick up a car and be lazy for abit. That evening we went back down to the waterfront and watched some more street performers. The best had to be a comedian who was also a fire eater, he was hillarious!
The next morning we got up early, had yet another donut breakfast (the novelty has definatly worn off, that much sugar for breakfast is just not good!)
and headed off to pick up our car with our fingers crossed that we wouldnt have any problems with the price. We got there and had to wait in the huge que for about 20 minutes before being seen. We'd booked the smallest car available and the attendant spent ages trying to persuade us to up grade to a bigger car using all the reasons she could think of but we werent giving in, at the end of the day we're on a budget and we knew we could survive in a small car after having the getz in oz WITH camping stuff too. Finally she gave up and radioed down to the garage below to get our car out. Luckily she didnt argue with the price and didnt mention the words "this is just not possible sir". We went down stairs and waited for our clown car, we couldnt stop laughing when we were shown our car, turned out they didnt have any small cars available so we were given a nice big new Toyota Corrola saloon. Basically if she's persuaded us to upgrade we would have been given the same car, how cheeky! We then drove back to
the motel- on the wrong side of the road, well for us its the wrong side anyway now my job for the next 5 weeks is to constantly said "drive on the right, drive on the right."
After succesfuly navigating us out of San Fran we headed south on the coast road. We stopped off in Santa Cruz and had a walk along the beach, around the fun fair and then onto the pier to see some more seals. A really nice place which we could have stayed longer in but we had to get moving. We stayed the night in Monterey abit further south, another really nice place with lots of quaint shops and resturants- no seals, instead they had otters playing in the sea!
The next day the drive got really nice, it was abit like the Great ocean rd in oz (better weather but not quite the same scenery, no london bridge rocks etc). We stopped off quite a few times to take photos, including at the Elephant seal colony (how many seals can you see in one week?!) as you can see from the photo it looks like a beach full of dead seals,
i promise they werent dead they were infact sunbathing as they had come on shore to shed their fur, it really did look like they were peeling. Our afternoon stop was in Santa Barbara, a really really nice place. We had a short walk around town and brought some delicious strawberries from a farmers market before carrying on with the drive. We decided to stop over in Plamdale, north east of LA to get a good night sleep and plan our gambling strategy for the next few days!
Next stop VEGAS (and i promise i'll get gra to that blog so it will be more amusing, he's just being extremely lazy at the mo). he thinks he is on holiday or something!!!!
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