Still here in foggy San Francisco, preparing last minute details for my trip. I have found and purchased the perfect pair of flip-flops, I have three different kinds of insect repellent, and the first night--and first night only--is booked at the Jungle Club in Koh Samui, Thailand. I have been busy assuring Matthes the cat that I will indeed return, and that he will have some adventures of his own while I am gone. He does enjoy a good adventure...as long as the cat food dish stays full and there's a warm body to snuggle up to. We all have our [View Full Entry]

---

---

17/07/09 Friday Day 337 After arriving in San Francisco airport we got our bags and headed for the train that goes into the city. The ticket machine is one of the most complicated I’ve seen. Basically you put in your money first and then start subtracting values until you get to how much your fare is. Luckily there was a member of staff on hand to help everyone! We got the train to the Civic Centre in the middle of the city. We should have gone one stop more to Powell Street. The walk from the Civic Centre to our hostel [View Full Entry]

---

---

July 18th -19th After a somewhat delirious drive into San Francisco the night of the 18th, Generalissimo and Karankawa rested up at the Cow Hollow Inn (which was an awesome suggestion, thank you Kate!). Upon waking in this beautiful--and VERY cold--city, we were stunned by the lack of nature. SF has been the first major city stop (we are electing to forget about Las Vegas--it's not like it's a real city anyway). Don't get us wrong, the rolling streets and spectacular architecture were totally worth the brief glimpse, but we missed camping and our personal nature chef, Juan Rambo. S [View Full Entry]

---

---

You guessed right, we woke up and quickly left the truck stop/casino/Subway/restaurant/hotel and headed to the littlest big city in the world, Reno! We were welcomed by the bright neon signs inviting us into the Casinos. Fern tried someone to marry her in the little Wedding Chapel, but other than that Reno was pretty uneventful! If we thought Nevada was dry, California is definitely caliente, caliente, caliente. The Skittle upped its temperature to 111 degrees and our deliria hit an all time high! With the windows down and all possible water emptied into our bodies we headed to our ne [View Full Entry]

---

---

Perhaps the most anticipated event of the trip was the midnight premier of the new Harry Potter movie. The lads ventured into the outskirts of San Francisco (Daly City to be precise) and arrived at the theatre around 1030pm for the midnight showing after some delicious Indian food and a quick refresher of the previous movie on DVD in the hotel room. The movie was very entertaining. Those fans with a more dedicated novel-based Harry Potter rather than a novel to big screen adaptation may have been a tad bit miffed at the liberties taken by the director, but none found [View Full Entry]

---

---

Arriving in San Fransisco we went to the luggage claim area to get our bags. When we spotted Helen’s on the carousel, it didn’t look much like when we’d left it. The lock had been ripped off the top, exposing lots of sharp bits of metal. Inside the case was a note left by US customs saying that they had checked the bag. Now, I can understand that sometimes customs have to get into a bag to check what’s inside, but our bag wasn’t even locked! In fact, it was no where near locked, the zips (that you were suppose to [View Full Entry]

---

---

---- eifach e hammer stadt ---- am mittwoch simmer in entli in san francisco acho,.. uf da hani mi scho lang gfreut... brrr... es isch mega chalt gsi... also sicher chälter wie i de schwiiz... i wör sägä so zwüschet 16 und 19grad... noch dem dasmor i de wüschte bi 44 grad gschwitzt hend hemor ez gfrore und hend möse di lange sache aleggä... zaller erst hemor mol mit üsem schlaue motel büchli usem mc e motel gsuchet... mir hend gwüsst das s.f. tüürer wird... drum hemer üs wörkli müe geh zum e billigs sueche... hämmer den au gfunde... öpe 15min [View Full Entry]

---

---

Temp:65°F - 18°C - Sunny Got up, had our free brekkie and ventured down to mission st/market st to Westfield San Francisco. Unfortunately we got there half an hour before the shops opened (FYI anyone coming here, shops on a Sunday don't open til 11am!) We found a fantastic shop called Old Navy (its part of the Gap/Banana Republic company) cheap clothes but good quality. Bought a few bits n bobs, then found a few more goodies, Forever 21 (3 levels), H&M (2 levels), DSW, Hollister and even ventured into Bloomingdales. San Francisco has amazing shopping! (if only i had some [View Full Entry]

---

---

Chinatown Hungry and poor, we decided to make Chinatown our first stop in San Francisco. We bee-lined straight to a cheap dim sim restaurant ($5.99 all you can eat dim sims! (now I know saying this we sound as though we are total buffet endorsers, but we maintain- its not about the quantity, its about the price!… oh it was gastronomically heaven, even the regrettable third plate) passing myriad trinket stores along the way. They sold the most random things from kung-fu slippers to gunpowder pellets (you throw them at the ground and they make a popping sound like a gun [View Full Entry]

---

---

Temp:65°F - 18°C - Cloudy in the morning. Mostly Sunny inl the arvo. Day 10 started out earlyish then we went and had our free brekkie in our hostel (that until today we didn't know that we got!) We met two guys from Aus. Ben from Perth and another guy from Carlton so we compared notes with them on touristy stuff (tho they didn't really have much of an idea). We left the hostel and headed for 18th street to catch the 33 bus out to Golden Gate Park to the Japanese Gardens. We strolled through the conservatory of Flowers before [View Full Entry]

---

---