Blogs from San Francisco, California, United States, North America - page 21

I couldn't believe it... she actually stamped on my foot. To the short, angry, obviously intoxicated... possibly stoned... woman at the back of the bus I was just another white face in the crowd, a stranger on the bus. We hadn't exchanged a single word. I hadn't made eye contact. I certainly had done nothing to provoke her wrath. I couldn't even tell you what she looked like. I'd been sitting for about ten minutes, shocked at the foul language and racial slurs shrilly emanating from an anonymous woman who I didn't have a clear view of at the back of the bus. When she stomped forward to "speak" to the bus driver, I had moved to let her pass. On the way back she said to me, "Get out of my way white boy!" and ... read more

Geo: 37.7792, -122.42Today was mainly spent walking! We caught the Cable Car with the intention of getting off at the top of the windy part of Lombard Street and walking down. Unfortunately for us, we got on the wrong car which dropped us at the bottom of Lombard Street. It is a very long, very steep walk back up to the top! Once we finally reached the top, we then proceeded to walk back down, stopping for photos along the way. Then we continued to walk, and walk, and walk until we reached Coit Tower. We had spent so much time walking there that unfortunately we didn't have time or go up as S & J and the boys had bookings for the night tour of Alcatraz later in the day and we had other things ... read more

Geo: 37.7792, -122.42Once we had arrived at Tullamarine Airport we found that check in was surprisingly quick, as we had been unable to check in online for some reason. We had a celebratory glass of bubbles in the Vue de Monde café before boarding the Qantas A380 bound for LAX. The flight went relatively quickly. We had preordered our meals, although the cabin crew seemed unaware of this system, we all ended up with what we wanted. We all got a little bit of sleep before arriving in LAX. Immigration and rechecking our luggage went smoothly and we walked to the terminal for our domestic flight to San Francisco. We had prebooked a private Lori's Shuttle and they were waiting for us. We quickly arrived at our hotel, the Chancellor on Union Square, where we had ... read more

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 ... read more

Sunday, November 22 So Sunday morning started REALLY early for us, a little too early. While it may seem like we had visited a lot of places up to this point (and in fact, we had), there were still lots of things to see before we made our way to the airport for our 2:35 flight and 1:30 car drop off. So I had to wake Mom up at a little after 6, and we needed to gather up our belongings and check out of the motel ASAP. Poor thing—when I woke her up, Mom’s first words were “Oh no!” Could it really be true that it was time to get up? She had not gotten enough sleep and was still exhausted from the day before. I had stayed up kind of late on Saturday night, ... read more