USA Road Trip - Part 3

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Hello,

We set off from Lone Pine after breakfast for our 5 hour drive to Mariposa where we were stopping for 2 nights to visit Yosemite. The sat nav actually took us through Yosemite National Park so we got a bit of an idea of just how beautiful it was. I couldn't believe how amazing the scenery was and how big it was. We got a 7 day pass for $20 as it was the cheapest you could get.

We finally arrived in Mariposa late afternoon and checked into our hotel where we were given a disabled room! We drove down the road in search of lunch and ended up in a diner. We are both so sick of greasy food now and the huge portions. I order off the appetizer section and it is still massive. It is so hard to find a healthy meal anywhere! I spent the rest of the day chilling by the pool - it's still boiling hot after 7pm here.

The next day we headed out towards Yosemite - 1,200 square miles of national park. We went straight to Yosemite Village where we hopped on the free shuttle bus around Yosemite Valley. We got off at Happy Isles and did a 4km trek to Vernal Falls which was uphill and very hard in the heat! We then hopped back on the shuttle to the next stop and did a mile long walk to Mirror Lake which was quite cool. After that we went back to the car with the aim of driving around the rest of the park and stopping at all the cool spots to take pictures. Yosemite Valley is just a tiny part of the park and there is much better stuff to see but you need a car. I drove this time and we set off driving around these huge mountains very close to the edge and every time we turned a corner the scenery just kept getting better and better. We took the Tioga Road route which is a 39 mile scenic drive past forests, meadows, lakes and granite domes. The road is set out really well and where the major hotspots are there are little areas where you can pull off the road and get out to take pictures. We ended up doing this about 10 times everytime we saw something we liked such as Tenaya Lake, Olmsted Point and Tuolumne Meadows. I was upset that we didn't see any bears but we did see some cute Western Gray Squirrels.

Five hours later we finally arrived home after we took the long route back and saw the sunset which was really nice. It was nearly 9pm by this point so we walked down the road and had a Mexican for dinner and then hit the sack exhausted!

The next day we set off at 10am for the last day of our road trip :o(. It was a 3 hour drive to San Francisco and it was Deaks's turn. We arrived in the afternoon and found our hotel but ended up driving round the block about 4 times before we could find a parking space which was very stressful as it's all one way streets and the drivers are nutcases! We eventually found a meter and were just about to walk around the corner when a guy in a van told me that he could see we had a hire car and that he thought he should let us know that if you don't park with the wheels facing the kerb then you get a ticket and that police were up the road waiting to give them out! Have never heard anything so ridiculous in my life but I could have kissed this man - the last thing we wanted was a ticket!

After we'd dumped all our stuff in the room we went straight back out to return the hire car. We had to fill up the tank first so as we were about to leave the petrol station we put on the sat nav to find where we were going and the damn woman sent me the wrong way down a one way street - eeeeeeek!!! I turned on to this street and realised that I was facing about 5 lanes of cars waiting to come straight towards me so I had to quickly pull over to the side of the road in a panic and then duck back into the petrol station when the lights changed after a few choice words to the stupid sat nav! By this point, after initially thinking we'd be really sad to leave the car as it was so nice to drive, we couldn't wait to get rid of the thing as we both had visions of crashing minutes before giving it back! We eventually got to the right road and the sat nav told me it would be on the right so we're both looking on the right and then I suddenly noticed it on the left and I was in the wrong lane so I had to drive down about 5 blocks before I could turn left and go back. Thankfully we eventually got the car back in one piece where we both breathed a huge sigh of relief!

That evening we went out in search of a restaurant and to hopefully find some good nightlife and we walked around the streets for ages and there wasn't much going on apart from numerous beggars and junkies on the street. I couldn't believe it, they were on every corner. I wouldn't have liked to walk around on my own here at night. I was expecting it to be a lot better than it was - nearly everyone I know that's been here has raved about it. We ended up getting 3 different cabs to different areas of the city and it was the same thing everywhere - drunken weirdos on the street shouting things out at us! We eventually settled in the North Beach area where we had a really nice Italian. There didn't seem to be any decent bars around - the few we did see looked horrible or had strange people hanging around in front of them so we ended up giving up hoping that Saturday night would be better!

The next day we had our very last shopping day :o( It had only taken me about 5 minutes to locate Macy's and Bloomingdales the day before with my radar so we headed straight there and spent hours looking around the rest of the shops at Union Square - the shops here are good, that I can say! Wasn't too impressed with the weather though - it's permanently overcast with quite a cold wind. Apparently it's always like this here and you only need to drive 10 minutes away in any direction and it's blue skies and 15 degrees warmer! Grrrrr.

That evening we got dressed up and went out for another attempt at finding somewhere decent to go. We went to Pier 39 and had cocktails in Hard Rock Cafe and then looked around there and it was mainly just restaurants so we got a cab to another area and looked around and ended up going back to our hotel and looking on the internet for decent clubs in San Fran. We got excited when we found that there was an 80s Polly Esther's club down the road like the one we went to in Vegas so we headed down there and found ourselves in an extremely dodgy area with gangs and loads of junkies asking for money and shouting things out at us from across the road. We felt really uncomfortable and when we got there it had closed down! Feeling very let down and wanting to get off the streets we gave up again!

On Sunday we decided to go out sightseeing so we walked to Union Square and got the tacky City Sightseeing Bus - same one we did in Sydney. We went to loads of places around the city - City Hall, Opera House, Chinatown, Transamerica Pyramid etc. We got off at Lombard Street which is the world's most crooked street which was quite cool and then we hopped back on the bus and went to Fisherman's Wharf, which was mobbed with people, and had a look around. From there we went to see the Golden Gate Bridge but you couldn't get a decent picture as it was so cloudy which was a shame. After that we hopped back on the bus and went back to Union Square. Learnt some interesting things from the onboard narrator but he was so OTT and getting on everyone's nerves and mentioned every 10 seconds that there was a tip bucket downstairs! You don't say! I decided to look in just one shop as we were walking back and ended up buying 2 more pairs of shoes - I have an illness! I'm coming home with 9 pairs now and that is definitely it!!!! We had to dodge more beggars on the street - I've never seen anything like it and it has really ruined my opinion of this city. Cab drivers have told us that people give them money and they go and buy alcohol and then urinate all over the streets which would explain the overwhelming scent down every street!! They all get fed in the local church so people shouldn't be giving them money.

That evening we went to Rainforest Cafe and had margaritas and some really drunken guys kept trying to buy us a drink - some lethal shot thing which we kept declining. The barman said they'd been drinking all day. We managed to get rid of them eventually and then we had dinner upstairs where we had this really sweet but slightly weird waiter who kept asking us to meet him and his friends at a bar in town afterwards. He ended up leaving his name and number on a piece of paper for us and said he really hoped we would turn up and just kept hanging around our table grinning with nothing to say! Needless to say we didn't go. We had good intentions and even drove past the place in the cab to check it out and it was some dark and dingy pub so we gave it a miss! A good night out in this place was obviously not meant to be - get me back to Vegas!!!!

For our very last travelling trip we went to Alcatraz! We were lucky to get tickets as a friend of mine who was here a week before us couldn't get any as they were booked up so far in advance but we just managed to get lucky when we went on the website. After having the cheesiest picture taken in front of an Alcatraz picture we boarded the boat and set off a mile and a quarter to Alcatraz Island. When we got there we were told the best way to get the most out of our visit and then we headed up the ramps to get to the top. We went straight to the cellhouse and did an audio tour around the prison. It was so good. We got headsets and a remote and it tells you where to start and the narrators are actual former correctional officers and prisoners which made it even better. It was so good doing it this way as everyone walks around in silence which means you really get into the story and imagine what it was like living in there day in day out and how everything worked. We saw everything - the library, inside the cells and the solitary isolation rooms, the canteen, visitation booths etc. We also learnt about the escape of Alcatraz in 1962 and the reasons it was closed down in 1963. A thoroughly good trip and a great way to end our travels!

For our last night we headed back to the North Beach area as there are loads of really nice Italians around there but not before getting a mouthful from a homeless man. He saw that we were looking for a cab outside our hotel and dashed into the road and grabbed one for us and we said thanks very much to him and then he started asking for money so we politely said no and received a torrent of abuse! Charming!

We had a really nice meal complimented with a delicious bottle of vino tinto but it all went wrong at the end when the waiter gave us the cheque and had written on there that he wanted a 20% tip. WHAT!!!!!! Even in America that is bad - the service wasn't even that amazing! Deaks got enraged and asked the couple at the next table if they had a pen and left the waiter a nice little note telling him that she didn't appreciate being told how much tip to leave and we headed off before he came back!!! He should be thankful he even got 15% after that!!!!!

So that's it folks. Was a bit of a shame that we didn't like San Francisco as much as we'd hoped but you can't like everywhere and it has made me even more excited about coming home!

Signing off (nearly)........!

xx

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