Blogs from San Francisco, California, United States, North America - page 219

This was actually my second visit to the bustling Californian city of San Francisco, but from my prior visit as a naive 14 year old boy all I remembered about San Francisco was the scary trip to Alcatraz Island, the crazy maximum security prison that stopped being used in 1963 and is now a museum. However once we were hanging off cable cars going up and down the incredibly steep streets (including the winding Lombard Street) of San Francisco the previous memories came back to me. We stayed a block from Union Square, which is an incredibly busy and bustling places full of buskers and scammers looking to get a few bucks out of some naive tourists. The Fisherman's Bay area is nice for a wander and we also went to the Pink Ladies, which are ... read more

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 park!! Full of beautiful trails and lake areas, playgrounds, the botanic gardens and a few other nice features. Managed to dry out around 2pm while hiking through the Presidio National Park. Fantastic views across the ... read more

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 ride up was pretty cool Amtrak has these big 2 story trains with heaps of space and a dining car where I sat and ate lunch and dinner with 2 separate retired couples. The train ... read more

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 - Return to San Francisco May/June 2005 AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND (5 WEEKS) June/July/August 2005 - EUROPE/AFRICA/ASIA Exact dates for these travels are not known but here's a rough plan. Fly into Spain from USA and ... read more

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 cause you can get to know people better and being right in the middle of the city is great for our night life - San Fran has a great music and 'chillin' scene and we've ... read more