Only thirteen days until my trip to Argentina with Glenn and Dan. The flight down is pretty much gratis, thanks to American Airlines, and then 10 days to travel (I know, not enough). The general itinerary: San Francisco->Buenos Aires->Bariloche->Mendoza->Buenos Aires->San Francisco [View Full Entry]

---

---

So here's a little list of why I'm glad to be home: 1. American food! Even though I don't eat burgers and fries much anymore, I'm craved for Nation's. No matter where we stopped off before heading back to Pleasant Hill, I would not eat anything until I had a chicken burger, fries, and a strawberry shake. 2. My car... I miss being able to just take off and drive to the mall, the gym, wherever I want to go. 3. The gym... yeah, even though I'm not as obsessive as I used to be about working out, I miss being [View Full Entry]

---

---

My husband and I went to the United States of America for a week. We went first of all to San Francisco, staying with my aunt, who is a teacher in San Jose. We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, that was luckily not covered in fog! We had great views of the bridge on the opposite side of the water to San Francisco, both from the usual tourist view point to the north east of the bridge. Then my aunt drove us back up and around to the north west of the bridge, which meant that San Francisco was behind [View Full Entry]

---

---

I visited the infamous prison on alcatraz island and am pictured here in one of the solitary confinement cells... nice. a guy called the 'bird man' spent over twenty years in this cell never meeting another human being. He was quite a clever guy though and spent the time learning foreign languages.... also in this picture is Ella MacPherson, a fellow Cambridge student who goes out with a friend of Roger's. [View Full Entry]

---

---

Today we visited Alcatraz, what a trip, you have to get a ferry out then you're on your own when you dock. It's a bizarre place, really small but still daunting, the cell block is up at the very top of the rock, it's tiny, at it's busiest it housed 260 prisoners it had capacity for 350 but A block was never used. The history is amazing, it was originally an Army Prison but was shut down because it was to brutal for soldiers, they made it a Federal Penetentiary in the 50's, it shut in 1963 and as far as [View Full Entry]

---

---

We had an interesting start to today with Fiona frightening the life out of some poor wee Indian dude she walked in on in the toilet, to be fair I think she got the biggest scare, the whole floor was woken up by their united screaming, I was laughing to myself in bed, she came running back into the room with her arms waving, you had to see it...... The story goes that she just walked into the open toilet and the light was off, this wee chap jumped up from the pan waving his arms about, Fiona stood there screaming [View Full Entry]

---

---

Nothing to report for here as we spent 22 out of 24 hours in our bed, managed to make it out for a couple of hours to get some breakfast/lunch/dinner in the form of burgers. Back to the hostel armed with chips and biscuits we watched the only TV channel we've got in out room (ABC) and the Rose Bowl Game, another college football match between University of Texas and Michigan State. I can't believe we slept all day and night and It was an early rise for me this monring (the 2nd), about 5am as I write all these diary [View Full Entry]

---

---

As they say here, we were up early for breakfast and out by 9am, it was glorious day, about 20 degrees, we had planned to do loads today and first on the agenda was Lombard Street, "The crookedest street in USA" as it markets itself, you've seen in on the telly, a windy street of right angles that cars que up to drive down. The walk up to it is mental, we felt like we were going to fall backwards it was that steep. The street itself is small, and didn't look as impresive as I remember on TV, there were [View Full Entry]

---

---

Today started with the free breakfast as usual, we were meant to be going to the College Bowl final today but it was $60 a ticket!! It's the equivilant of Napier V Abertay, granted played in front of 60,000 punters but there was zero danger I was going to be allowed to blow our budget on a bunch of students throwing a ball about so we decided to take a wander into town. As we got into Union Square it started to batter down with rain, when it rains here it does it in style, we wandered in and out of [View Full Entry]

---

---

Well, my life is packed in my car, and I'm leaving the coast tonight. This isn't really the official first leg of the trip, but it's close. I will be trying to get up to Kirkwood for New Years, although all this snow may make things a bit difficult. But of course that means the skiing will be outrageous. Some time after Jan 2 is when the trip really begins, Dave and I will be leaving for Taos, New Mexico as a first stop, and we'll hopefully just follow this storm out to the rockies for continued powder. While every place [View Full Entry]

---

---