The last American Post

Yesterday we jumped on a double decker tour bus to see the sites. We discovered that we had already seen most of the "sites" of San Fran, but we were able to orientate ourselves in the city a little better. It was pretty cool driving across the bridge (literally and figuratively) Tony felt he had to duck as some of the tunnels and trees were a little low for his liking. Sometimes being short has it's advantages.

We jumped out at Fishermans Wharf again and hopped on a cable car which took us to the top of a really big hill. This street (Lombard Street) has a 27 degree slope and has eight switchbacks (hair pin turns) so that people and cars can actually get down the street!

We spent the rest of the day looking at the different suburbs of San Fran, Chinatown, Little Italy, Alamo etc, we also popped back into the Apple store (trip 3) to see the new Macbooks. I have to say that they are really nice, and I could really do with a laptop.. hint hint

Last night we headed to the port for our last dinner outing. On the way we decided to stop into our favorite little store (4th trip) to purchase a Nano for myself. it was time to upgrade from my brick of an iPod purchased around 4-5 years ago, so Tony got me one as a belated birthday present. It goes with my new Nike+ running shoes and kit we bought earlier in the trip. I am really looking forward to trying it all out. Can you all hear the inner geek speaking?

After dinner Tony decided desert was in order, so we headed to a little creamery, no one else was in the shop so we didn't realise quite what we were in for. Purchasing an ice cream has never been so fun. I decided to have an Oreo one, which involved vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, chocolate bits, two Oreo cookies and two spatulas to crush the Oreo's and mix it all together. Tony had a chocolate fudge one and you can imagine what his had in it!

Today we are heading up to have a look in the Coit Tower before heading off to the airport early this afternoon. We have had an amazing trip and neither of us want it to end.

We met some Lady's on the trolley bus last night, who told us to "say nice things about us Americans" and to be honest, other than United Airlines staff (not all, just some), we really do only have nice things to say about Americans. Everyone has been really friendly, helpful and nice. The scenery has been amazing... more than I ever dreamed of, the food has been rather hit and miss to be fair, some has been awesome, others not so great (Twinkies are not nice by the way) the roading blew Tony's mind, and the public transport system has Tony stating that we should build a monorail in Wellington on a regular basis!

It has been really interesting hearing people talk about the election and the difference in feeling about it all over the country. I will blog a bit more about this and other American musings over the next few weeks when I get a moment to think some things through better.

See you next time America.

Alcatraz

We headed into San Fran a little weary, all the excitement of Silicon Valley had us feeling that there was nothing more worthwhile seeing. But we were wrong!

After dropping the car at the Motel (there are no early check ins at this motel) we headed into town to take a look around. We walked most of the way down Market street - which turns out to be a really long street. Tony's Apple GPS directed us to the Apple store (for the second time) where we proceeded to drool over the new Nano's (again) and found out that the new mac books would arrive the next day.

After scouting around a little we headed back up to our end of town for an early dinner, and some crap TV.

Today we got up and headed over to Fishermans Wharf to look into a bus tour and Alcatraz. We walked the length of the wharfs just because we could and because it was a lovely day and it was all rather pretty.

Lunch was next on the list Tony wanted to go to Hooters, but we couldn't find it, so we settled on a nice place on Pier 39.


We found the seals at the end of the Pier, they were loud and smelly, but rather entertaining, I ended up taking heaps of photo's until we couldn't stand the smell any longer!

Onto Alcatraz. Because we had arrived off season, we were able to get tickets on the next boat out to what used to be a prision on an island in the middle of the San Fran Bay. Everytime I look at the island or hear the name I totally think of Harry Potter and Azkaban.

After listening to an orientation video, we headed up into the main cell block. We were given an audio tour (it was included in the price, you didn't really ahve much choice) which told you all about the cell block, the escape
attempts and the wardens areas. It was really enlightening, they liked to tell us about Al Capone as much as possible, but I guess this was the main claim to fame.

When Tony started getting really cold (that's what happens when you don't bring a jumper) we decided it was time to head back to shore.

Alcatraz was everything I expected it to be, and the photo's you could take of the San Fran skyline were fun... Well these ones were anyhow... you have no idea how many shots it took before we got San Fran in the back ground!

Silicon What?

Need I say more????

Except I should confirm that we did not get into the press conference, it was actually over before we got there! Tony was in geek heaven.

Santa Cruz

We spent the next day doing the thing we love the most, Outlet shopping. We headed down to the Great Mall of the Bay Area which is south of San Fran, and on our way to Santa Cruz.

We spent a couple of hours perusing the fine stores, and purchasing discounted goods, until we found that we had had enough. Interestingly we did not have a map. so we took the long route down to Santa Cruz, as we couldn't find the short one... (it was lovely and scenic though so we coped. i think the problem was that Tony was focusing on the new shoes he brought and not the road!)

Santa Cruz was ok, I guess we were expecting another Clearwater Beach, and this was not that. We went for a walk and had a nice dinner on the pier over looking the harbour.

The next day we decided it was time to head up to San Fran itself and Tony wanted to try and gate crash the Apple announcement of the new Macbooks, so with detailed maps in hand, we headed for the mythical Silicon Valley

Yo Yo Yosemite

We headed onto Yosemite National Park to check out what was going on. And to be fair... not a lot. It had been snowing so the roads had been closed all day, they had just opened up when we arrived there in the mid afternoon.

If you hadn't of guessed already it was rather cold. At some stages it was down to 32ºF (1ºC). The road through Yosemite was really nice, there was snow on the ground and everything was turning red or loosing leaves. This made for a very pretty drive.




We spent the night in a little town called Oaksdale. The local pub served great food and had some live music, it was just the recharge we needed.

Death Valley

We left Vegas after stopping back in at an outlet store so that Tony could buy a new bag as he now has too much stuff to fit into the bags we had already bought. - He will argue that I have bought all the stuff, but mine still fits in the same bags so you tell me who the shopaholic is!

We headed on out to Death Valley, took a wrong turn, turned around and were on track again - A little slip in the GPS (my boyfriend). Once we got there, it was exactly like the National geographic show I had watched on it, except in real life, there are heaps of tourists and long drop toilets.

The salt plains were very cool and the valley itself was so barren. The temperature has dropped here and it is abnormally cold for this time of year, so we were not hit with the sweltering heat ( I guess that is a bonus? but normally a part of the whole experience)

The valley is 282 feet below sea level, you can camp in the Valley but in summer it can get up to 57 degrees Celsius (134 degrees Fahrenheit) So I'm thinking camping is not the best idea in the world in the middle of summer.

We left death valley and headed for a small town called Beatty to stay the night. They still allow smoking inside here, so we had a really hard time finding somewhere to eat, and had to put up with the mild stench of cigarettes.



Off to Yosemite now...

The Grand Canyon!

First thing this morning we headed off to the Grand Canyon. wow, that's all I can say. Yes Megan was right, it is just a big hole in the ground, but it is an awesome hole.




We headed back to Vegas after that, and stayed at the Excalibur a castle themed hotel at the other end of the strip to the Riviera. We walked around the southern end of the Strip, went to the Luxor and the MGM casino's and shopped at the M&M store and the Coca cola store - Look out for our funky new salt and pepper shakers!

A little bit more gambling finished off the night. Shattered, we headed off to bed.