San Francisco!!

Well, here we are in San Francisco - the city of the Golden Gate bridge, gay pride, victorian architecture, Full House and as Hester keeps reminding me, Charmed.

The city is interesting, both beautiful and a bit dirty - I guess all large cities these days have elements like that. Our first day we visited the Wharf and checked out the Golden Gate Bridge which was a good view over the bay. We managed to go in the wrong direction on the bus but we sorted that out easy enough - we got off and went back the way we came

The cable cars are very cool, the city is incredibly steep in parts - there is a street called the "World's crookedest street" that is just zig zags and looking down from above it is crazy that they even decided to build on it.

The cable cars were designed like trams but without an overhead power - instead there is literally a cable lying beneath the tracks that *pulls* the carriage up the hills. Back when they were built in the late 1900s, the horses couldn't get up the hills with a carriage - so the design is quite simple but ingenius.

Today we went to the civic centre and did some shopping - beating off beggars at every street corner we walked on. They seem to be everywhere, but particularly the neighbourhood we wandered along today, it was a dirtier end of town. Up around where our hotel is at Union Square is the arts area so it's very nice and the wander down to the shopping, cable cars and Macy's etc is pretty pleasant. It was a bit of a shock to wander through the dodgier end of town this morning, we saw a side of SF we hadn't seen up until now.

The Victorian architecture despite having being destroyed to a large extent in the 1908 earthquake and fires, still looks great in the downtown area and gives the city a nice character.

Unfortunately we didn't realise we had to book about 2-weeks ahead to get on the Alcatraz tour, so we missed out on doing that, which I was quite disappointed about.

We're off to Vancouver tomorrow morning, and from what we've seen on the news today, to SNOW! Perhaps the weather will fine up a bit over the week we're there...

That's all for now, till next time!
Craig and Hester