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Published: July 10th 2008
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So we touched down safely in San Francisco and once we landed all the passengers started applauding to show their appreciation for the successful landing. James had always wanted to do this on a normal flight within the UK, but didn’t never had the guts to do it incase no one else joined in, but now that he had his opportunity he was on his feet clapping away! Geek.
We caught the subway (known as the BART) to San Francisco centre and walked to our hostel that was about 5 blocks away. As described in a previous blog, Kim hasn’t ‘bonded’ to well with her rucksack so when she had to drag it up and down the steepest hills you have ever since, you can only imagine the mood she was in. In the end James grabbed it off her and ended up carrying the two large bags causing all sorts of problems to his spine while Kim strolled up behind him browsing in all the windows of the department stores. We quickly made changing Kim’s rucksack number one priority on our ‘Non-Sight seeing to do list’.
The hostel that we were staying in was a backpackers dream and was a
massive difference to the one in NY. It is part of a chain called USA Hostels that operate up the west coast. It had every kind of service and facility a travel could require including free pancakes for breakfast.
We were quite tired as the West coast of the US is 3 hours behind the East coast (8 hours behind the UK) and therefore had an early night. James had forward planned and booked a private room so that we could have a good nights sleep and was also hoping for a little ‘us time’ (kisses and cuddles for the grandparents) but as soon as we placed our heads on the pillows we drifted off to sleep…….James woke up and tried it on for a shot while, but Kim quickly shot him down and demanded that he shut up, turn off the light and make her a drink of water….. Prude!
The following morning we got back into tourist mode and had a short walk down to Union Square. Because we were quite far away from the main tourist attractions that were based on the coast we decide to purchase another Tour Bus ticket and use it as our
mode of transport while also seeing the city. We thought this was a good idea at the time, but after hearing that Marilyn Monroe and ??????????? didn’t get married in St. Peters church because they had been divorced for the 6th time it started to get a little tedious and mind-numbing.
The first drop off on the tour route was Pier 39 famous for its beautiful harbour and more recently for its tourist shopping areas. We took a stroll around the shops and stopped for dinner on the pier for Fish and Chips (Kim had chicken, as she doesn’t like fish) and then a nice bowl of Ben and Jerry’s for desert…..we cant get enough of the stuff! A short walk down the coast is Fishermans wharf, home to wild sea lions that come to bask in the sun every summer. The other main attraction at Fishermans wharf is Alcatraz Prison (AKA The Rock), as we where visiting it the following day we took some nice photos of us with it in the background.
San Francisco is actually famous for its crab and Sourbread, none of which we tried because both were quite highly priced and didn’t fit into
our $30 a day budget (although it seemed we had enough for beer )
Later that afternoon we were getting a bit bored because we didn’t want to spend much more money and we were doing all the main attractions over the following days. While we were strolling down the street Kim noticed a tattoo parlour and suggested having a look because James has wanted to get one of his current tattoos (The Japanese rising sun) refilled as it had faded a little. When James showed his tattoo to the owner he refused to touch it, claiming that I shouldn’t have that symbol on my body and compared it to having the Nazi Schwarz sign!!! Fascist! Apparently his grandparents died at the hands of the Jap’s, so we dropped the discussion there! Obviously this little outburst threw James off guard because when the owner said that he would be more than happy to do a new tattoo, 30 seconds later James found himself in the chair all strapped up!! Half an hour later James was the proud owner of a new tattoo, taking his total up to 6.
While James was having his tattoo done, he noticed that Kim
was eying up a nice Egyptian style on the display board and never to be out done by James, Kim was next up in the chair painfully having the ‘Eye of Horus’ permanently inked onto the top of her spine.
At this point we would like to apologies to our parents now, as this is the first time they have been made aware of our spontaneous actions. Kids hey!
On leaving the tattooist the guy said to James “I wouldn’t flash that tattoo around here if I were you sonny, the local Chinese gangs might not take to kindly too it” This obviously got Kim worried and for the whole day she was pulling James’s t-shirt sleeve down……it practically stretches down to his fingers now!
As we were now skint and in quite a bit of pain we decided to stay in our hostel and enjoyed our first home cooked meal. It consisted of an Avocado, Microwave shrimp rice and satay noodles followed by two cups of tap water. It was quite an experience trying to cook your dinner with another 20 people in the kitchen. It reminded us of being back at Uni.
Later that night we went
down to the hostel’s ‘party room’ and listened to a night of Karaoke. James kept threatening to get up and serenade Kim to the song ‘You’ve lost that loving feeling’ like Tom Cruise in Top Gun, but she said that she would never speak to him again if he did and would go back to the room…..this just encouraged him more! Ha. The star of the night must have been this young Chinese guy (who looked slightly like James’s friend Mark) doing his own adapted version of ‘My heart will go on’ (from Titanic). We wasn’t sure if he was trying his best or taking the p*ss, but when he finished we swear that he had a few tears running down his cheek.
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Hui
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I MISS SF!!!! nice tatt kim! i wanna hv another one too but B said NO!! wat a party pooper! anyway, go check out haight street!! its very hippie! and go to lombard street whr all the famous movie sceen is shot there! take care! luv ya! xxxx