Usaaaaa

An open-ended adventure by Ilus Read more

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Trip start
April 2, 2018
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Early morning flight from Glasgow
April 2, 2018 in Scotland ⋅ ☀️ 2 °C
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Layover at Heathrow
April 2, 2018 in England ⋅ ⛅ 9 °C
We didn't even have to leave terminal 5,and it still looked like the biggest airport I've seen, and we had to take a train to our gate as well... Thankfully it was only for 2 hours, which went by fast mostly by getting from one plane to another. It look like we'll be flying on a Boeing 747-400 ,which looks like a beast!Read more
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Jetlag afternoon
April 2, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 17 °C
So our only plan after getting to our airbnb was to somehow stay away until the evening, so that our internal clocks are set to local time. This meant staying up until 5-6 in the morning by eu time, which was not the easiest as we already woke up at 5... My brilliant idea was to start at the Mission District, which is not really at the centre of town, and then walk into the centre from there. Which started out fine, we had some nice Mexican food, saw some cool murals and houses. But then the walk to town started, and it was some of the dodgyest neighbourhoods we have ever walked through, the streets full of homeless people, druggies, crazies and a random combination of the three - not the best first impression of the city I must say... In the end we made in to union Square, which was a bit more interesting and nice. We also saw our first cute tram too.Read more
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First breakfast
April 3, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 10 °C
We stopped to look in at the Filipino restaurant next to the train station that we walked past before. We left with Thai ice tea and some deep fried sugar coated bananas (we thought they were spring rolls...)Read more
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Second breakfast
April 3, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 13 °C
We came in yo have coffee, but we got tempted into having a Vietnamese sandwich too :D the place had only us in it and old men playing scratchcards and live keno
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Bagbnb
April 3, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 14 °C
A new website we just discovered and used is called bagbnb, where you can find places to drop your bags off for cheap. Most of them seem to be hotels where you have a receptionist hanging out anyway, so it's good money for the hotel, and quite cheap for us!Read more
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Tesla shop
April 3, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 14 °C
Looking in a tesla store and sadly discovering that you can only test drive with a US driving licence. We still got to sit in and play around with a model 3
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Japantown
April 3, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 14 °C
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Benkyo-do mochi
April 3, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C
We stood around trying to choose between the different mochis for about 10 minutes, letting japanese old people in front of us in the queue and asking them about their favourites :) afterwards 2 of them found of on a bench and asked us if we liked them :)Read more
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Kinokuniya bookstore
April 3, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C
This cool bookstore we have found inside the East Mall in Japantown. It was full of beautiful and funny and cute books, magazines and all sorts of stuff, I wanted to buy them all, but I managed to only buy some magnets in the end.Read more
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Japanese supermarket
April 3, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C
Of course we couldn't leave Japantown without going into a Japanese supermarket - and of course we couldn't leave without food... We promised we would stop for a few hours, which will probably work, as we are actually full after eating our boxes of fresh sushiRead more
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Alamo Square Park and the Painted Ladies
April 3, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C
With sushi picnic from Japantown
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Pacific Heights and Cow's Hollow
April 3, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 18 °C
Fancy neighbourhoods with Victorian and Edwardian mansions. The streets were completely empty apart from gardeners and other household employees... Quite creepy in a way. Otherwise beautiful houses, and nice views of the ocean. Oh and steep hills to climb of course.Read more
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Some steep steep streets
April 3, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 18 °C
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In-n-out burger
April 3, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 17 °C
Seamus's dreams come true
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Pier 43 on Fishermans Wharf
April 3, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 17 °C
We went into a funny museum of old arcade machines and spent a few of our quarters (after we figue6out which coins they are - we had this problem when paying before that we had no idea what any of the coins are...) there was also a ww2 submarine to look at with the adorable name of US PampanitoRead more
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Boudin sourdough bakery
April 3, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C
They have been making the same sourdough from the same starter since 1949! Supposedly the san francisco air and water makes for a special breed of bacteria that taste delicious (they do). The way the factory is made, you can see the whole process through glass windows which is really entertaining. There was also a small museum on the history of San Francisco, and their sourdough. Oh also we took a quiz to find out what type of bread we are :DRead more
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Meeting with cousin Evi
April 3, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C
After visiting the bakery we realised we were completely exhausted so we decided to give up sightseeing for the day. A testament to my tiredness is that we were right next to the piers full off seals, and I just forgot to look at them (even though I love seals and sea lions and otters they are the best). We were next to one of the cute san francisco trams, but the wait for it looked like an hour, so we took a lyft back to our bag hotel instead. The real San Francisco travel experience. Then we walked our bags to the Bart station and took a train to Fruitvale, Oakland where my amazing cousin Evi was waiting to pick us up. We were slightly wondering what Oakland will be like, as it is said to have really dodgy parts, but of course that's not where we ended up living. If anything Oakland feels less dodgy as it's homeless population lives is big centered camps instead of spreading around the whole city. By the way it is definitely not just a suburb of San Francisco, it is a quite large city on its own! And as Hugo kept pointing out, it has a better everything than San Francisco (better craft beer, Mexican food, etc). Oh oh, so Hugo is the husband of my cousin Evi, and he's from Mexico so he definitely knows his Mexican food. I can't wait to try out something approved by him. They live in Oakland with their dog Santo, who they adopted in Cambodia (and they joke that getting the dog into the county was 10 times easier than getting Hugo in :D)Read more
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American shopping experience
April 4, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 12 °C
We had to buy some walking shoes for Seamus and a jacket so we visited and American shopping mall. It really was everything the stereotypes make it to be including cheesy shopping music and every shop assistant trying to he so helpful it started to be creepy :D we also bought a picnic and looked at all the sections you get in American supermarkets - like an entire section devoted only to cookie dough. Also doughnuts were cheaper than potatoes, Bill Bryson was right!Read more
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Muir Woods National Monument
April 4, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C
So we got to our first redwood park a bit too late (even though we wake up at 6 nowadays, which is a surreal feeling with Seamus, I don't think this has ever happened to him before) because we had to wait for the shops to open at 10. And apparently the parking lots fill up at around 9:30... Fortunately we took a wrong turn, and drove on from the park, and then we pulled over on the side of the road to turn around and figure out what we want to do. And then we realised that there's no "no parking" signs here so we can just leave the car here! A guy was just leaving with his truck and he confirmed that we can park here (we also asked some unrelated traffic questions, as some things are still vague about the traffic system here) so we had free parking a 10 minute hike away instead of having to wait 2 hours for the privilege of paying for it, not bad. We walked the longest available trail of 2 miles around the park, constantly stopping to admire new trees rising to amazing heights. It also smelled amazing, and literally sounded like fake forest noises from a movie. There were nice signs of the side of the road too, for example a photo of the founders of the UN gathering in these exact woods after the death of Roosevelt. Finally we looked around the gift shop, considered buying about 10 different items, and then walked away with a pressed penny instead. It's actually the first time I used one of these, and it actually makes for a cute souvenir for cheap, I might just start collecting these from now on.Read more
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Stinson beach
April 4, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C
A nice long beach that would have had a much bigger impact on us, we're we not living in Spain for the last year :D it was still nice to walk around, for me it somehow made it sink in, that for nearly a month we will be on vacation.Read more
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Bolinas
April 4, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C
"Bolinas - The town that didn't want company" as said by the New York Times and almost everyone else who knows about this place. Its a weird community that seems like its stuck in the 1970s with grey haired hippy surfers and all round general funny characters including a hobo looking guy with a pet pigeon who traveled on his head! It's really funny seeing houses that start at 1.5 million dollars with rusting 1990s Toyotas sitting outside, either the people want to fit in with the towns image or no one sells their houses here and have owned it since the 70s :D also they have people from the town taking down every sign leading to the place on the main road so not too many people go there

We got flagged down by a older guy clearing out an art gallery to help him load massive paintings onto the roof of his truck who ended up talking to us for ages about everything - American politics, the Spanish civil war, the azores and that he had lived there since 1973. We walked up and down the main street and past the grand Hotel which is some guys 2 bedroom house which is basically the only place to stay in town and left feeling quite bemused than this weird place exists only 20 miles from San Francisco

(if you've noticed a change in the writing style, it's because it was written by Seamus after a pint of beer)Read more
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Views of the Golden Gate Bridge
April 4, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 12 °C
The best views of the bridge are actually outside of San Francisco, so we stopped off here first, before driving over. It was quite cold and windy, but still worth it. I had plans of walking down to a beach too, but in the end we decided it was too late and we were too tired for that.Read more
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Thai dinner
April 4, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 13 °C
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San Francisco Chinatown
April 5, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 15 °C
The San Francisco Chinatown is definitely bigger that the Japanese one, but it is much much more touristic too. On entering through the dragon's gate, we were greeted mostly with souvenir and "art" shops. The Chinese style buildings did look cool though, especially in the shadows on the financial district's skyscrapers. Also, most of the ads and signs were in Chinese, like big car ad billboards, and posters about the mayor elections. At this point we were starving (we had breakfast at about 7 in the morning with our weird sleep schedule) so we went to a famous "bakery" that actually sells dim sum dumplings. Contrary to my advice Seamus ordered 2 of each dumplings, so we ended up with a solid kilo of food, for 15 dollars. As the place was takeaway, we ate it sitting on a curb. I felt completely full after eating about half of them... Being in a food coma, we walked to a nearby park still in Chinatown. It was a really funny place to sit around, with live Chinese music (especially the singing ones were especially "amazing"), and groups of old Chinese ladies playing cards. Apparently you need to dramatically slap down each card you place too. We also visited the smallest alley in Chinatown - the sign said that the city decided to confine the Chinese population to a certain area, so they had to create these tiny alleys. The funny thing is that to our eyes it was completely wide, in most Spanish or Italian towns cars would have been driving on it with ease. We visited a fortune cookie factory in the same alley, where you can see them folding the cookies in front of you, and also try some of the still warm unfolded cookies. They had some interesting flavoured ones too, i was especially curious about the green tea one, but you could only buy an enormous bag, so we decided against it after all.Read more
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