Blogs from San Francisco, California, United States, North America - page 191

hi we arrived safely at SF on 1st nov and with everything intact. One of the gals got her birthday on 1st nov and we managed to celebrate it on two occasions - once on the plane - courtesy of SIA singapore and tonite at The Cheesefactory at Macy's in SF. Unfortunately the cheese cake at Macy's not free :( Day 1 went without any major hiccups..thankfully!... read more

We've added a gallery of photos from our trip to date. We have taken over two hundred, so this is a representative sample. Not sure how you look at them - we added them as a "gallery" called "USA"... read more

Time to leave San Fran…well almost. My sister went to Alcatraz while I wandered the streets of Fisherman’s wharf. I bought a US national park pass for the upcoming parks we were going to visit and wandered around the maritime museum, then wandered into some camera stores to see what I would pay for a decent digital SLR camera. Well deciding on the camera was easy as I had already done my research but then to make a long story short, I guess I got duped into buying more expensive horribly overpriced and marked up items for the camera. The sales guys were incredibly dodgy, always able to reduce the price more....hmmm. So I left the shop fairly light in the pocket having well exceeded my budget. Overall it was a very bad and teachable experience, ... read more

Wednesday - eventually got to Vegas some 23 hours after leaving home. Sadly, Wendy's pack went to Denver instead. Got a taxi to the hotel had a crappy sandwich and passed out. Thursday - Wendy's pack arrived. We picked up a hire car and headed off on the freeway for the Grand Canyon, stopping off en route to buy a tent and sleeping bags. Navigation perfect thanks to Wendy's advance organisation. Got to Grand Canyon mid afternoon and went for a short walk along the rim trail with a samall percntage of the 5 million other tourits it gets annually. It's really too vast to take in - 5000 feet deep, 8 - 16 miles wide and 277 miles long, which is like from John o Graots to Gretna. Pitched the tent and had another early ... read more

DAY 2 So after trying to chase down my friends Mark and Michelle I ended up in Alcatraz...they'd sold out but the guy said ah what the hell I'll let you..another stroke of luck for the Kambanopoulos Kid...hope this lasts out till Vegas...been spending money like water...Met a couple of guys from Wakefield and Sabrina a model from London on the ferry to Alcatraz, the guys from Yorkshire I'm pretty sure should have been inside 'The Rock' rather than visitng it..Sabrina reminded me of Grace Jones ...the audio tour there detailing escape attempts and moiders was pretty good was pretty realistic kept looking over my shoulder everytime the whistle went...reminded me of Papillon...Devil's Island as well as looking scarily like Shawshank prison..."Machine Gun" Kelly, Al "Scarface" Capone.. they all spent time here..Scarface that reminds me..there's a ... read more