next stop san francisco, the brighton of the US (or in my opinion it is anyway). this was the city i was most excited about exploring. a west coast city full of entrepreneurs. and i did love san fran, but as i'm discovering now you just can't get to know a city properly unless you live there....so watch this space san fran....! i think we are so spoilt in nyc, the city entertains you, you land and new york is loud and proud, but with many hidden depths that take time to discover. whereas san fran has a quiet confidence, she knows shes pretty fly, but she's comfortable enough in herself to let you take your time in uncovering her beauty. nick and i are so used to frantically charging around a city to see and experience as much of the city as possible that san fran shocked us into chilling out! i'm looking forward to coming back here to find out more about her, she's a dark horse.
now i've been dying to have a little rant about 'air bnb' this whole time....so here goes. we discovered this site on holiday and it came up trumps everytime. its basically where local bnb's, or even normal people looking to make some cash advertise their spaces/spare rooms. san fran was our first air bnb experience. we stayed in this gorgeous double room with a kitchenette area in a town house near golden gate park. it was cheaper than a hotel, or dingy motel, we met some great people who lived there and others who were staying there, and got to stay where the locals live. they'll be more about the wonders of air bnb so stay tuned!
my amazing husband managed to get us tickets to alcatraz, it took him a whole evening, but he did it. this place gets booked up so quickly, so book a few months in advance if you're heading to san fran. to get our tickets we had to book it jointly with another tour and so we opted for the cheapest, a walking tour around china town, so popular that we were the only ones on it. but actually it was a really good tour. so anyway, alcatraz. it was incredible. nick was entrusted with the camera that day and my oh my the number of pictures of prison cells i had to trawl through was pretty impressive, so you're lucky theres only 3! you get an audio tour of the prison and can pause it at any time and they relay all the stories of failed escapes. this was nick's best day, and possibly one of mine too. geeks.
the story goes that the prisoners used spoons from the dining hall to make this hole behind the heating grate.
we didnt time our visit to the golden gate bridge very well. instead we learnt about the engineering of suspension bridges, dad you'd have loved it.
thankfully we'd taken some pictures of the golden gate bridge the day before without too much mist.
