25 February 2005
San Francisco - the beginnning
This city if beautiful.
We left Waikiki on the same shuttle bus that dropped us off on our first night. It was abit sad to be leaving but we were off on another adventure so that kind of made up for it. Our driver was a character, he kept laughing at the other drivers and because there are so many one way streets in Waikiki we were literally driving in circles to get to all the hotels he had to stop at and to get out of the city. he had a really infections giggle, so Chris and i were smiling most of the way to Honolulu International Airport. this airport is nothing to write home about, so I won't.
The flight over was fine, full but fine, and the view of the sunrise on monday morning was pretty spectacular. We arrived at about seven that morning and although we couldn't check into our hostel that early we were able to locker our luggage and head out for a few hours.
Here in San Fran (which is what it shall be referred to from now on) has regular buses, electric buses and cable cars (which look a little like trams in Melbourne). The cable car, while a little slower is by far the most fun one to ride. They are literally moved along the street by grabbing hold of a cable that runs underneath the city streets. We have our doubts about how well the driver can control the speed of the beast, this being the case, but they seems to bdo well and we had no accidents. Chris and I had the best seat on the cable car, this means that we were actually standing up and hanging onto the outside. Very cool, just watch out for parked trucks and pedestrians and street signs and and and... Still, yay!
More photos here .
It must have been our day for funny drivers because the one we had ont the cable car was also a hoot, partly though I think it was his dry delivery and cool american accent that made it all the funnier.
The streets of San Fran are laid out in a neat grid, all running either north-south or east-west, and you could be forgiven for thinking, looking at the map, that the city was built on a nice flat piece of land. It isn't. The hills here are amazing! The are so steep that even the fittest of you would be panting and wheezing by the top! It is awe inspiring to watch the cable cars climb these hills and believe me, you want to hold on tight when they start heading either up or down!
The view down some of these streets across the city or across the bay are very pretty and as you get closer to Fisherman's Wharf you gat an excellent view of Alcatraz.
We went for a wander when we arrived at Fisherman's Wharf (nothing like the one in Darwin) and found a guy selling tickets for a cruiose around the bay, so after we had booked our tickets for Alcatraz for the Tuesday we went back and boarded his boat, 'The Wacky Jacky'... We liked the name. The sun was shining but the wind was freezing, even underneath the complimentary borrowed blankets.
The Wacky Jacky sailed out under the Golden Gate Bridge (so named because it was built over the gateway to the gold rush area, not because of its colour). The rush of water under the bridge is huge, which if you look at a map is not surprising. The bay is huge and so must the amount of water be that tries to get through there each time the tide changes. From there we sailed around the island of Alcatraz, it is actually quite pretty, our amusing captain (yes another one!!) gave us a running commentary on which movies were filmed where and who lives where and so on. It was well worth the $10.
From there we wandered around some small local markets and inspected the photography and jewellery. Some nice pieces but nothing that demanded we buy it.
That evening we found our way to a club called 'Bisuits and Blues', surprise surprise, it was a blues club. Playing that evening was Natasha James and Band. They were quite good so we stayed and ordered some biscuits to go with our blues. For the un-enlightened (which included us until a couple of days ago) a biscuit is a warm, baked, breadlike thing which at home we commonly call a scone. It was a really cool evening and we tried a couple of samples of a local beer called, Sierra Nevada... yum.
The next day we got up feeling really blah. Not beacuse of the Sierra Nevada... The mattress we slept on was mostly collapsed on one side and so we kept rolling into the middle or risked rolling off altogether. We made it down to Pier 41 for the Alcatraz tour in time and had our photo taken by the staff as we were boarding the boat (we later found out that we could buy that very daggy photo for a mere $15, or six copies for $20 - no thanks).
The tickets included an audio tour of the prison once we made on to the island. This was excellent. We heard from several previous inmates and prison wardens about their experiences. It was really well put together and very informative. The buildings there started out as a military fort to protect the bay, it was then turned into a military prison when it became clear that a fort was nolonger needed. The it was turned into a prison for the nation's nastiest criminals. There were some very intersting stories included on the audio tour and we were both really pleased that we got to go.
We went for a wander on Pier 39, some interesting shops, but all very touristy and we were still not feeling well so we found a drug store (pharmacy) and bought some drugs (paracetemol and cold and flu tabs) and headed for home. We decided to hang out in the hostel common room and watch TV for a couple of hours. You meet some interesting charcters in hostels...
We left Waikiki on the same shuttle bus that dropped us off on our first night. It was abit sad to be leaving but we were off on another adventure so that kind of made up for it. Our driver was a character, he kept laughing at the other drivers and because there are so many one way streets in Waikiki we were literally driving in circles to get to all the hotels he had to stop at and to get out of the city. he had a really infections giggle, so Chris and i were smiling most of the way to Honolulu International Airport. this airport is nothing to write home about, so I won't.
The flight over was fine, full but fine, and the view of the sunrise on monday morning was pretty spectacular. We arrived at about seven that morning and although we couldn't check into our hostel that early we were able to locker our luggage and head out for a few hours.
Here in San Fran (which is what it shall be referred to from now on) has regular buses, electric buses and cable cars (which look a little like trams in Melbourne). The cable car, while a little slower is by far the most fun one to ride. They are literally moved along the street by grabbing hold of a cable that runs underneath the city streets. We have our doubts about how well the driver can control the speed of the beast, this being the case, but they seems to bdo well and we had no accidents. Chris and I had the best seat on the cable car, this means that we were actually standing up and hanging onto the outside. Very cool, just watch out for parked trucks and pedestrians and street signs and and and... Still, yay!
More photos here .
It must have been our day for funny drivers because the one we had ont the cable car was also a hoot, partly though I think it was his dry delivery and cool american accent that made it all the funnier.
The streets of San Fran are laid out in a neat grid, all running either north-south or east-west, and you could be forgiven for thinking, looking at the map, that the city was built on a nice flat piece of land. It isn't. The hills here are amazing! The are so steep that even the fittest of you would be panting and wheezing by the top! It is awe inspiring to watch the cable cars climb these hills and believe me, you want to hold on tight when they start heading either up or down!
The view down some of these streets across the city or across the bay are very pretty and as you get closer to Fisherman's Wharf you gat an excellent view of Alcatraz.
We went for a wander when we arrived at Fisherman's Wharf (nothing like the one in Darwin) and found a guy selling tickets for a cruiose around the bay, so after we had booked our tickets for Alcatraz for the Tuesday we went back and boarded his boat, 'The Wacky Jacky'... We liked the name. The sun was shining but the wind was freezing, even underneath the complimentary borrowed blankets.
The Wacky Jacky sailed out under the Golden Gate Bridge (so named because it was built over the gateway to the gold rush area, not because of its colour). The rush of water under the bridge is huge, which if you look at a map is not surprising. The bay is huge and so must the amount of water be that tries to get through there each time the tide changes. From there we sailed around the island of Alcatraz, it is actually quite pretty, our amusing captain (yes another one!!) gave us a running commentary on which movies were filmed where and who lives where and so on. It was well worth the $10.
From there we wandered around some small local markets and inspected the photography and jewellery. Some nice pieces but nothing that demanded we buy it.
That evening we found our way to a club called 'Bisuits and Blues', surprise surprise, it was a blues club. Playing that evening was Natasha James and Band. They were quite good so we stayed and ordered some biscuits to go with our blues. For the un-enlightened (which included us until a couple of days ago) a biscuit is a warm, baked, breadlike thing which at home we commonly call a scone. It was a really cool evening and we tried a couple of samples of a local beer called, Sierra Nevada... yum.
The next day we got up feeling really blah. Not beacuse of the Sierra Nevada... The mattress we slept on was mostly collapsed on one side and so we kept rolling into the middle or risked rolling off altogether. We made it down to Pier 41 for the Alcatraz tour in time and had our photo taken by the staff as we were boarding the boat (we later found out that we could buy that very daggy photo for a mere $15, or six copies for $20 - no thanks).
The tickets included an audio tour of the prison once we made on to the island. This was excellent. We heard from several previous inmates and prison wardens about their experiences. It was really well put together and very informative. The buildings there started out as a military fort to protect the bay, it was then turned into a military prison when it became clear that a fort was nolonger needed. The it was turned into a prison for the nation's nastiest criminals. There were some very intersting stories included on the audio tour and we were both really pleased that we got to go.
We went for a wander on Pier 39, some interesting shops, but all very touristy and we were still not feeling well so we found a drug store (pharmacy) and bought some drugs (paracetemol and cold and flu tabs) and headed for home. We decided to hang out in the hostel common room and watch TV for a couple of hours. You meet some interesting charcters in hostels...
# posted by Elke & Chris @ 3:26 am 
