Our final destination San Francisco

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San Francisco

We said some sad goodbyes to Paul, Coren, Nick and Katey who we had had such great fun with over the last week. However it was time for our final destination San Francisco!

After a long drive we crossed the Golden Gate bridge listening to “because we are going to San Francisco” ..made sense. The cities roads were rather confusing and this was proven when Rick accidently went up a one way road the wrong way.

We continued our sight seeing and visited Lombard Street, a beautiful wiggly street through a botanic garden. For dinner we feasted on what could arguable be the best pizza in the world at Uncle Vetoes.

Our hostel was rather interesting as it was a small building located next to the homeless shelter. As we walked down our hostels road we saw a mad tramp throwing bikes at passing cars, another one spinning in circles singing and many others rolling around and scratching sores on their arms. Unfortunately one had thought our hostels door was a toilet.

I didn’t get much sleep the first night in San Fran as I endured a night of singing from the nearby drunk homeless people. Fortunately we didn’t have to spend the day in the hostel and departed to explore our final City.

Our first stop was Fishermans Quay where we were devastated to find the Alcatraz prison tours were fully booked. However we could see the lonely Island from the bay where we sat and ate chocolate doughnuts!

We spent another day visiting Height Ashbury the hippie central off San Fran. It was a very interesting part of the City with niche shops and some very very relaxed people hmmm. We bought lots of fancy dress in preparation for university parties and relaxed in the park.

In the evening we had a lovely meal in a small Italian restaurant. Our meal was politely interrupted by five American girls who wanted to join us to view the skyline later. We agreed and hit the 32second floor to view the city in lights. We spent the rest of the night in the city square exchanging travelling stories with the Orange County girls.

The last two days in San Francisco incorporated lots of shopping and sightseeing. We met the girls again for a delicious meal and enjoyed their company for our last night on our gap year! We also had our last beers of our gap year courtesy of a local tramp and reflected on our amazing adventures.

Our final day was a right mix of emotions. We couldn’t wait to see friends and family once again but wanted to continue our travels. To clear our minds we went to the cinema to watch ‘Wall e’. Ross and Rick were shouted at by a very aggressive rude family who thought their feet stank. We also rode the San Fran trams, a great way to see the City.

Out of the 531 meals we ate on our gap year we all agreed our final one was the best. Our location was in the Cheesecake Factory overlooking skyscrapers and San Fran City centre. I could barely finish my first course when the waiter presented me with 3 chocolate fudge cakes covered in a river of ice cream and soaked with hot chocolate sauce. We reminisced for a while and then it was time to take the tram to the airport…

We all took our seats, put our ipods in and you could tell by looking into each others eyes the emotions we all felt…this was the end of an awesome adventure!

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