San Fran

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The plane ride over here went well, it was completely full no free seats at all. Overall I really liked San Francisco. The central city isn’t that interesting, but places like Fishermans wharf are much more exciting, with lots of cool and unusual shops, such as a magic shop, a puzzle shop and a decorations shop, including Christmas and Halloween decorations.

SF is very expensive, I didn’t realise til I got here but SF has the most expensive land prices in the US, even higher than Manhattan. A house like in Mrs Doubtfire will cost between 4-5 million dollars, some property rentals are as much as $170,000 a year! The hotel I have is a bed, and a walkway just big enough for a mouse! There are lots of help wanted signs here, I think people can’t afford to live here so getting staff is a problem. There are 44 hills in SF and I think I must have walked up most of them. SF is very cold, the temperature today was supposed to be 30 degrees which is probably right, when there is no wind. However when the wind gets up, which is most of the time it becomes like winter. I thought for California in the summer I won’t need warm clothes, I was very wrong, it can get bitterly cold here. It’s because they get the cold winds from Alaska meeting the cold winds from the Pacific Ocean. Although I did get a little sun burnt today as all I focused on was the cold and completely forgot about the sun.

I mainly came here to walk over the Golden Gate Bridge and visit Alcatraz. The first day I had a bit of a problem I went to book tickets to Alcatraz and they told me the next available space was in about a month, I almost cried. Anyway I managed to find a tour company that had some, I had to pay a lot more than I should of but I may not be back here. Part of this ticket included the hop on hop off bus, so I went round the city, stopping on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge. I walked across it and back again. It’s just incredible, and windy and cold, but I wasn’t about to let that stop me. It was well worth coming to SF just to see it. The hop on hop off bus had a night tour where you could see the city at night which looked very peaceful and serene, I can see why so many people want to live here.

On my final day here I went to Alcatraz, there is a boat you need to catch to go over, it sailed every half hour and on each trip there were probably 300 people going across. The prison was closed because the cost of maintenance was too high, many of the buildings are crumbling away. It would be worth coming to SF just to see Alcatraz, it’s a very unworldly place, it’s almost like stepping back in time 50 years. I saw the cell blocks, the wardens office, the control room and the morgue. I almost got locked up by mistake, they misunderstood my accent I said my name was Hempseed, not ‘m trying to smoke the stuff!

Tomorrow I’m off to Vagas.

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