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Published: April 23rd 2009
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Well that was that, I had handed in my honours thesis and was leaving university for the last time as a student. My flight was departing in 48 hours, surely enough time to organise the many, many loose ends before I fled in a desperate attempt to avoid the real world and prevent myself becoming a contributing member of society/taxpayer/desk jockey! I was determined to be more organised than when I left the country last time. . . .
I was slightly successful.
I still left in a mad rush but I knew the feeling so I was more comfortable with it!
I was leaving to spend a Northern Winter at the Breckenridge Ski Resort in Colorado, USA. But first I had a 17 hour layover and a few days in San Fran with a couple of friends.
Auckland
I've been to Auckland before,
Road Trippin' NZ Style: The North Island so I was primarily interested in passing the 17 hours as quickly and as painlessly as possible, luckily it was daytime when I was there. This strategy involved catching the bus into the city and falling asleep on a hostel couch for as long as possible. Check.
After an unrefreshing and
slight sweaty sleep on a leather couch I headed out for some breakfast and wandered around the city for a bit. During the morning I snuck into the NZ National Maritime Museum and checked out the model ships and some of the naval history of the country. The rest of the day was spent rather aimlessly walking around and trying to kill time. I passed the Escape Rental Van place where we had rented vans last time and spent a lovely hour or two sleeping in the park like a bum. Great times!
But soon it was time to leave and head off on the extremely long flight to San Francisco and the real topic of this blog. Congrats on making it this far through my inane ramblings.
San Francisco
I've been to San Francisco before,
The City by the Bay, my main reason for returning was to see two friends from my time in Montreal, Matt and Olivia. I met up with them in their hotel room apartment, apparently rent is sky high in San Fran, and we then proceeded to do what most friends do when seeing each other for the first time in a while, we got saucy on
cheap vodka and felt terrible the next morning. Well maybe that's just my friends!
We spent a lot of our time hanging out at cafe's and chilling at the bar Matt worked at once a week called McTeague's. I tried to explore areas of the city that I had missed last time but also to see a few of my favourite sites from previously.
A few of the more specific things that we did included . . . .
Going to the
Exploratorium, a science museum type of place filled mainly with parents and their little kids and a few immature older kids! It was real fun though walking through the building and playing with all the exhibits.
I spent some time hanging out in the
Haight-Ashbury district, the centre of the hippie counter-culture and now a slightly touristy area selling tie-dye t-shirts, bongs, pipes and various other emblems of the 60's.
The highlight of my time there was definitely the all day bike ride I went on with Matt. We rode from down town San Fran up to Haight-Ashbury (if you know your San Fran geography then you will know that this is mostly
Freewheelin'
Matt's photo up a killer, death hill of doom), through the
Golden Gate Park, which stretches for nearly 5 kilometres down to the Pacific coast. Then up along the sea front to the Golden Gate bridge and back to the hostel we were staying at. All in all it was a great day, and rather tiring if I do say so myself.
So that was pretty much my time in San Fran, I must apologise for the brevity and lack of details in this blog but I have delayed writing it for well over 4 months so I think I did rather well to remember anything at all!
Next time Breckenridge, Colorado and a winter of fun and shenanigans!
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Joel
Joel Meadows
Good to have you back blogging mate!
Cheers for giving me a very pleasant diversion to looking up articles for my thesis topic... :P Looking forward to the pics from Breckenridge!