Hello San Francisco!

Greetings everyone from foggy San Francisco!

On Thursday morning we were picked up bright and early by our driver from Delancey's Car Service. It was cheaper to hire an SUV for $70 to take all of us and our goods and chattels to the airport than it was to get 2 taxis.

It was a nice touch for our last views of New York to be in the morning sun though the photo opportunities were limited. The car trip was actually our first car trip for 2 weeks and it is terrifying. Apart from the fact every fibre of your being is screaming to get on the other side of the road the road rules are really viewed as mere guidelines. A red light means the person behind you has to stop, you don't. Want to change lanes, just do it. Speed limit ... what speed limit?

Anyway, I digress. We were flying in a Delta 757 and we had the very back row to ourselves - 3 seats on either side. Don't know how we ended up in the back row but it was pretty comfortable. Dave took a few good photos of Manhattan from the plane as we took off from JFK.

The trip across was interesting, I slept for the first bit, it was cloudy anyway. There were lots of farms across Iowa which gave way to snow into Wyoming and Nevada as we neared the Rocky Mountains. You could see the lakes were frozen and it looked damn cold. The mountains also meant a few patches of turbulence which always keeps it interesting.

We could see the El Capitan mountain as we were getting closer to San Francisco. Really big, but we'll see it close-up on Saturday when we do our Yosemite tour so more on that later.

We made it to San Francisco but landed from the south so there wasn't much to see except the typical San Francisco Bay fog. Our transfer was with Go Lorries transfers, it was warp factor 5 again but at least he didn't speak Klingon. We are staying at the Handlery Union Square Hotel which is quite old but very central. We went for a bite just up the road at David's Delicatessen which was one of those old style dinners where the waiter worked in the middle and everyone sat around the outside. We then went for a walk around Union Square and the main shopping district.

The shops were much the same as New York but laid out completely differently of course, Manhattan has a very convenient grid layout which San Francisco doesn't - damn rude. One thing we did find was a huge Westfield! And we saw our first cable car!

We have noticed that there are a lot of beggers. There were a lot in New York also but they were more spread out, in San Fran there seem to be a few on every corner. After wandering around in Nordstroms, the Ferrari Shop, American Eagle, Kate Spade, and even Walgreens we headed back to the Hotel. We are starting at 8am tomorrow morning for a tour of San Francisco and a trip to Alcatraz.

More tomorrow!Read more