Lets go....to San Francisco...

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If your daughter lives in London and you live in New Zealand you have to fly to the other side of the world to see her.

Of course this is totally worth it, especially with the added bonus of needing to stop off somewhere half way to avoid deep vein thrombosis and the agony of up to 24 hours cooped up in cattle class with a child repeatedly kicking the back of your seat.

Our choice of stopover this time was San Francisco because 1. we've never been there, 2. it's a city with so much resonance for baby boomers like us as the home of hippies, free love and nostalgia-laden music and 3. there was a good deal on the flight.

I would have liked longer, but when Rhys found out that San Francisco is considered the most expensive city in the States to visit we restricted ourselves to four days. However, a few days before the flight he was doing some research and discovered one of those days was possibly the worst day to visit anywhere in the United States – unless you have relatives there and roast turkey is your favourite food. One of our two full days was Thanksgiving!

“It’s the USA – everything will still be open!” I said, confident that as San Francisco is a major tourist city there wouldn’t be any issues. But clearly Thanksgiving is a bigger deal than us antipodeans give it credit for.

We checked the bus we wanted to take was still running - it was but on a shorter service. When we arrived we realised many smaller shops and restaurants would be closing and all public museums and galleries would be closed. However, Thanksgiving is the start of the Christmas season which means the start of rampant consumerism on a grand scale. The day after Thanksgiving is Black Friday when the big stores like Maceys not only don't close for the day - they just don't close. After opening the doors on Friday morning they stay open all Friday night and on into Saturday with massive sales, discounts and deals.

Our hotel was round the corner from Maceys on Union Square and as Friday evening wore on, more and more busloads of San Franciscans disgorged into the already crowded shops. I finally tore myself away from the brightly lit, Christmas -music-saturated shops at 10pm after talking to a weary looking young assistant who was rostered on till 2am.

Even more surprising was that when we arrived in London the next day they also had Black Friday sales in full swing - without bothering with the Thanksgiving. Then we read about Black Friday sales back in NZ...have we become this isolated from the world in Matarangi?

San Francisco got a big tick from us and we'd love to go back for a longer stay. It's a great city for walking even though its hilly - there's plenty of public transport to help out. We wanted to walk over the Golden Gate Bridge so took the hop on-hop off bus tour to Sausalito which dropped us off on the south side to walk the 1.7miles across the bridge with hundreds of holidaying San Franciscans.

The bridge is one of those things that has become uber-iconic, so obvious you take it for granted. Then you see it in real life and realise what all the fuss is about. It really is beautiful even though it's still painted in primer - the International Orange which makes such a lovely contrast with sky blue. To walk over it is like walking between the sea and sky, which is exactly what you are doing. And the view of the city by the Bay is just brilliant.

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