After arriving in San Francisco, we were shuttled to our hotel room and discovered two things - 1. That USA drivers are absolutely nuts and 2. that our hotel was in a dodgy area (lots of homeless and drug dealers). We still had a great time and saw the golden gate bridge, alcatraz, went for a walk to union square and caught the cable cars and saw how beautiful the city could be on our City Tour. [View Full Entry]

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Oops, here's an express entry..... San Fran, lots of homeless people in the downtown area but an otherwise beautiful city on the bay. Museum of Modern Art was utterly amazing... did the obligatory ride on the up and down tram car which takes you to the extremely touristy tacky Fisherman's Wharf. Had only one more day there and decided to ignore the torrential rain and took mysel;f off to the Golden Gate Bridge PK, which happens to be about 5 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge. Oh der. Soaked through but perservered through the park, which surprisingly enough .... is a [View Full Entry]

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I just re-encountered this webpage after having finished my month in Europe a while back. I forgot all about it. I did see Lance win the Tour de France, witnessed the initial stage in Chartres, standing behind a short family (so I could see) that didn't speak English but regardless of the language 'barrier' we laughed all day and of course, I fell in love - with Lance, with the moment of massive achievement, with bustling clouds hovering over the Chartres Cathedral, of being soaked because I stuffed my feeble umbrella into a Parisian hotel wastebasket... But I'm back in SF [View Full Entry]

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From: fran the man Sent: Thursday, 7 April 2005 To: everyone Subject: San Fran Well I made it to Lafayette, despite arriving an hour and a half late - nice one Amtrak! I spent yesterday hanging out with barb, who managed to get hold of me on my mobile half an hour before I jumped on my train. Picked myself up some new tramping boots as mine are still lost in the all the moving I’ve done in the last 5 months. Am going into town today to do some exploration like, must go and book my Alcatraz tickets! My Train [View Full Entry]

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I have two bags at home and two packing lists- one to Slovakia and the other to Mozambique. It would seem that I would be more exited about Mozambique since I am going there for two years, but at the moment I am more jittery about Slovakia, since I am leaving in 4 days. [View Full Entry]

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Okay so here's a rough road map of our travels. All in the hope that everyone that's promised to meet us somewhere will start making some real plans. And those who have not will be tempted to do so. February/March/April 2005 - SOUTH AMERICA February 21 to March 10 - Chilean Patagonia (Torres del Paine)and Tierra Del Fuego March 10 to March 20 - Santiago and vicinity March 20 to March 28 - Buenos Aires, Argentina March 29 to April 9 - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil April 10 to April 24 - Peru (Machu Pichu and the Amazon) April 25 - [View Full Entry]

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Hey everyone We are already home in Calgary but thought I would write one more log for our weekend in SF. Did some touristy things, but first things first, went to the North Face outlet in Berkely (took the light rail then a bus) but unfortunately they were weak in the clearance dept. However I bought some quick dry shirts for cheap for working out and hiking. Went to the Royal Robbins outlet and bought some clothes there, but no cheap down jackets anywhere to be seen.... Diane, I'm sure that we went by your old house (was it 1825, on [View Full Entry]

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This is to catch you up on my trip, today is the first chance I’ve had to write. I almost missed my flight from Philadelphia to Atlanta, they were calling final boarding when I got through security, I was upgraded to Business Class on this flight and was suppose to be on the one from Atlanta to San Francisco, but 2 of us had the same seat on out ticket and I got there second and lost. Poppy, Even and Serene picked me up at the airport, I was so excited to see them. We went to their house, “long and [View Full Entry]

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Yeah, so like we're like, totally into San Francisco, Dudes. It's super cool and we've had some like, awesome times. I mean like, totally. OK, that's enough. We are still in San Francisco and loving it - it's a great city but it's more like a lot of different communities that happen to really, really close to each other. We're staying close to Chinatown which is just a short walk from North Beach and the Bay Area. It's all very urban and chic. Our hostel is brilliant - it's nice to be staying somewhere for more than a night or two [View Full Entry]

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Hey folks, Well, we survived the bus...all 12.5 hours of it. Managed to get a bit of sleep, despite it being totally freezing for the whole journey. Arrived around lunchtime and decided it wasn't too far to the hostel, so we'd walk it, complete with rucksacks and all. Fortunately we didn't have to hike up any of the notoriously steep hills to get there, but did have to negotiate 6 flights of stairs once we'd arrived: the sedatary commute of the last 6 months seems a distant memory! Having showered and eaten, we headed for the harbour to check out the [View Full Entry]

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