10th December, 23:30

After departing the wharf, I headed on the long, near vertical, trek home for the last time. It was dark now and I just trudged slowly along, enjoying my surroundings and the music of Brand New. Once I got in, I packed my bad for the sad journey tomorrow and went to the lobby to finish my postcards. As a nice coincidence, Dan was working some crazy night shift at his work, alone, so we chatted via the internet tubes. At around 8.30 I trundled to the Indonesian restaurant across the street, where I got stir friend egg noodles with chicken, prawns and veg, a tiger beer and a scoop of mango ice cream all for about £6.35. EXTREMELY nice. I enjoyed it immensely. After returning to the hostel, I did some cool, yet geeky, python/linux hacking on my n810 and disturbed Dan some more. I fell asleep before the random guy returned.

10th December, 17:13

Today, I've been mostly wandering the city slightly aimlessly, enjoying the city in the beautiful sun and taking photos of various buildings. After buying two t-shirts in Macy's, I played in the Metreon shopping centre for a bit, getting a chicken pesto burrito and playing an arcade machine for a bit. It involved being ninjas but with guns, shooting other ninjas, without guns. The whole machine was on sale for $1950 though, which was quite cool. I walked further down market street until I hit the very pretty ferry building, along the bay, which is lined with many palm trees. I walked towards the bay bridge, past a cool spider sculpture, like outside the Tate, and a huge! bow and arrow sculpture. Very impressive.

I walked towards the city to see the big pyramid shaped building, which was again impressive. I then walked onward, past the church of Scientology and up some pretty streets towards the colt tower. It's an old tower built by a woman (called Colt), on a hill looking out over all of San Francisco. The views from the top were amazing, and it was really quiet and only $4.50! After that, I descended down some little crazy stairs to some streets, past lots of amazing house built directly alongside these weird non-road streets. As I came down I randomly saw a trickle of water and discovered the amazing Levi plaza. In the middle is a really fun water feature and the Levi HQ surrounds it. Inside there was loads of interesting Levi related paraphernalia, including jeans from over 100 years ago. I carried on towards the waterfront, past a crazy early sculpture and on to pier 39. I wandered around this for a while as the sun was setting, enjoying and reflecting on San Francisco. Now in a Bondin Bakery cafe, with a cookie, and a coffee, near some french woman taking 15 minutes to eat a boiled egg by apparently sucking it. Very odd.

10th December, 09:00

Yesterday, after what I last wrote, I wandered around some more, along the harbour, past all the extremely nice boats there. I then found a "fish and chip" shop, which I should have guessed would not have been able to grasp the concept of chips, wasn't too bad though. I then chilled and browsed for a while before the 4.30 ferry came, to take me back to pier 41. I walked back to la hostel because queues for cable cars are crazy and they rarely seem to be faster than walking. I organised to meet train Jane and her friend at 7.30, so I chilled for a while, breaking various internet terminals and other such things people of my calibre do. I met Jane and her friend, Rachael, also from Glastonbury, at the lobby a bit early and we wandered off on our bar finding expedition.

The conclusions that can be drawn from the highly excellent night is that 1) You should always listen to Tom about where bars are 2) USA hostels are far better than hostelling International 3) I'm immune to food poisoning. Let me guide you through the night.

We began by wandering to a bar the girls had found previously, and had a pint in there, but we decided to move on as although it was nice , we wanted to see what else here was. After a while of wandering, and being unable to find anything but Disney shops ("That doesn't serve alcohol") and Macy's, we trekked back to the hostel and asked the dude on reception where bars were. Turned out they were on Polk Street, where I had initially pondered some might be. After crossing the road to avoid the guys in gang colours, we went in a cocktail bar which had a Marilyn Monroe film playing. The bar people were jolly nice and we got free popcorn at the bar as well. After initially having some form of generic lager, possibly Amstel Light, I was persuaded to get a cocktail, so I got a Hawaiian ice tea, which after watching them make it and following a taste confirmation, seemed to be a near pint glass of vodka, rum, gin and tequila, with a splash of pineapple and cranberry. I had two in the end, as for $7.50 each, they seemed best value for money. Rachael had a number of cosmopolitans and Jane had some crazy drink with leave in that could have been Japanese.

We then went across the road to another bar which was cool, busier, and they're Guiness was EXTREMELY suspect. In that the whole pint was poured in one go, and there was no swirling, highly strange. Anyway, after various super power conversations I headed to the loo, as you do. Where somehow I met some guy who I chatted to, back in the bar, for a while, both of us jovially mocking the others city. Twas very humourous, though I fear 50% of the words we used were "dude". The girls peeled me away from him and we went to a diner where Rachael and I got friend chicken and Jane got a hamburger. Which I finished in the end. As it turns out, they both were up all night ill from food poisoning, not sure how it didn't affect me. Anyway, we bid farewell and I wandered back home to bed.

Woke up this morning, awake and fully fit, there's a new guy in the room, but not met him yet. I think he's called Ali, and is from Saudia Arabia, according to his receipt anyway.

8th December, 23:50?

Today I have mainly forgotten to write down exactly what I did in my journal but I shall try to reconstruct roughly what happened. I went down to fisherman's wharf to grab the 12:15 Bay Cruise, with captain Nemo who introduced us to many San Francisco characters. We go to go under the Golden Gate Bridge, see the opposite side of the bay, around Alcatraz and the bay bridge before returning to harbour.

Afterwards I walked along the water front, wonderful weather just enjoying all the sights. There were areas of grass and beach where people were playing football, American football, frisbee etc, everyone seemed jolly happy. My aim was the Exploratorium, which was quite a trek, and the sun was beginning to set, so I went around the Fine Arts Palace, which is a magnificent structure surrounded by a pond/lake, garden etc. I only had about an hour to go in the Exploratorium and I really wish I had more, as it was similar to the Science Museum's launch pad, but about 5 times the size, and amazing in there. Cheung reckoned it was only for kids, but I thought it was awesome, so many different scientific experiments to try, and interesting effects, including one thing that apparently temporarily blinded some part of your eye. I avoided that. Very good though.

I wandered back along Lombard Street to see the sights, and then ended up walking along Polk street and feeling hungry, went into a random Chinese restaurant. I had fried noodles with combination meat, which basically meant all the meat they could find around the kitchen, including octopus, which still makes me feel queasy after Feutaventura. There was a cool waiter in there, who was new to the job, and he asked me if I skated, and I cunningly lied and said a bit. He proceeded to explain that I looked like a skater and in my rather odd way, I was exceedingly chuffed. I probably tipped well, and made my way back, along the crazy hills, to the hostel.

I'm gonna miss my daily chats with Cheung, when I get back after a long day walking. We chat about what we did, give suggestions of where to go, and it's just generally very pleasant. Made a good impression on me about South Koreans, as did the guy in Chicago.

7th December, 20:12

If I had one tip for a budding traveller, it would be not to get behind on your journal, even by a day.

If I had two tips, the second would be, write a postcard a day to spread the creative flow.

Unfortunately, I have no tips, so we're all pretty screwed.

What have I done today? Mainly what I wanted. I relaxed in the morning, and then sauntered out to some shops in sodden shoes and a slightly pathetic limp. I bought some more socks from old navy, and an awesome hoodie/sweatshirt/jacket. Very indie, a tad emo, and cool. Cheap as well. I then grabbed a Greek style salad in the shopping centre while reading Kerouac. I finished The Dharma Bums, very Buddhist, which although not really my style of thought, I always find very interesting and peacefully crazy.

After this I wandered the shops some more, but was unable to find any shoes I liked. I did see some awesomely cheap surfwear brands in Macy's though, quiksilver and billabong, so I may return there at a later date. I ended back at the hostel, threw on my new top to show off and blogged a bit. On the phone nearby was a girl with the most awesome Irish accent ever, very satisfactory. I then began the epic task of writing postcards. After a while hunger got the better of me and I went across the road to a nice little pasta place. I got some crazy filled pasta device with beef and chicken stuffed in it. Mushrooms and peas as well, twas very nice.

06 December, 22:41

Today shall be known as the wet day, so wet that I bought an umbrella, which as we all know goes against all my strangely held views. Unfortunately, this did not help my trench foot inducing skater shoes, which not only have major war wounds from vicious escalators, but also have significant splits in the soles. To confound matters even more, my throat is killing me, the left side of my jaw hurts when I chew and my big toe on my left foot feels like there is a nail through the joint.

Anyway, besides these normal tribulations of life, I left the hostel around 11:20 and wandered down to the wharf, where I went in the Aquarium, 3rd I've been to so far! Although it was quite small, they had 2 giant tanks below with tunnels through the middle of them, which was extremely cool. There were sharks, rays, starfish, and many many other fish. The whole experience was quite short though, but I decided to come back at 3pm for the feeding.

Further down Pier 31 I played in various souvenir shops, until I spotted an All You Can Eat Buffet sign on an Italian restaurant. Not learning from my previous pizza disaster, I ate far too much pizza, meatballs, garlic twists and salad. Washed down with an amstel light, 3 came around and I went back to see an awesome feeding time for the sharks and rays. I then went to the petting type area and I got to touch and stroke some rays, small tiger sharks and starfish. Incredible! Rays are very smooth and soft, while the sharks are more rough and more so in one direction than the other. Star fish were surprisingly hard and crusty, but were amazing colours.

It was now time to limp to Pier 33 where the rain increased it's vicious attack upon the ground. I was a tad early so waited in Peet's coffee house, where there was no room to sit. So I collected my ticket, promptly placed it so elegantly in a puddle, and joined the already growing queue. After a bit of a wait we were let onto the boat for the short trip across the swirling San Francisco bay waters.

As we were on the late night special super duper tour, we had a guide talk to use on the way across, explaining various points of interest including little Alcatraz. Once docked we all filed off the boat and started up the hill towards the theatre room. We past the last remaining guard tower as well as some Native American graffiti from their occupation of the island, post prison days. We had a short presentation explaining what was going on and answering some questions. We then made our way up the hill to the main prison barracks in the driving rain, with me squelching all the way.

Inside we received an audio tour that guides you around the cells and other areas of interest. It was actually voiced by past guards and prisoners, many not alive any more, and detailed the experiences and various escape attempts. Throughout the evening they kept saying that no one escaped alive, except 3 guys escaped and were never found, so in theory they could have survived and gone to South America. Cool!

Once the tour was over I saw 2 presentations on escapes and then a movie on the entire history of Alcatraz. All very interesting, some of the escape attempts were crazy elaborate and I have no idea how the guards didn't realise. Some built up to the actual escape day with months of preparation. Good stuff. Took the boat back across the bay through the driving rain, to the magnificent view of San Francisco at night. I limped back to the hostel and must have done something but I can't quite remember. I'm sure it must have been something of epic proportions, or maybe not.

5th December, 22:57

After bidding farewell to Mike, I began my walk to the De Young Museum, after my morning internet party. The walk to and through Golden Gate park was exceptionally nice today, as it was sunny, no clouds and quite baking so resorted to just a t-shirt. I took a similar, though slightly more intriguing path to the park and wandered into the De Young in a surprisingly sweaty state. Luckily I had to check my bag into a cloakroom so I could dry off somewhat. I quite enjoyed the museum, everyone was friendly, some good art and ancient sculptures and best of all I came across a Edward Hopper painting, I think it was called "scene of New Orleans". Very good. There was even a Charlie Sheeler as well, and I don't even remember any all black paintings. Though some all black sculptures existed. There was another beautiful painting called, A Ranch On The Plains by Peter Hurd (in high tech zoom-able glory), that was excellent, but then I'm a sucker for orangy warming sunsets and long shadows. There were some photos as well, including two of Audrey Hepburn looking stunning as normal.

There was also a giant spork.

And a house sized paper clip.

I went up to the observation deck, and looked out in stunned confusion as my city of paradise had been invaded by opaque fluffy stuff. So much so you couldn't see more than 2 blocks away! Once more Mother Nature had won the battle of modern art. As my ticket game me free entry to Legion of Honour as well, I decided to walk the very long trek there as I am a glutton for punishment.

It was unfortunately a disappointment, apart from the cookie and coffee I had, it was all just fine art, or something, which was as dull as it was tedious. Too many portraits and religious pomp. I then started the long walk back, but went along Clement Street, which has quite a few interesting oriental shops and restaurants. I stopped in Apple Books which was a cool 2nd had bookshop, and nearly bought Crisis of Infinite Earth, but nothing had prices on and I fear much expense as it was heavy. Adn they didn't have Kerouac's Big Sur, which I need. After finally reaching the hostel, I set abhout finding ways to avoid postcard duty, like cookies, talking to Damien, who was heading off, and the internets. I then went and got an extremely spicy Thai green curry. Those sneaky Thai's with their subjective use of the word "medium". It was nice though, except the Sierra Nevada beer was a bit pants. There were some cool and strange hippies sitting near me that were having an argument about levels of various masters of the world, with Jesus being one of them. Also something about Arc Angels evolving from humans, twas all slightly bemusing, and eventually one stormed out in a huff.

When I came back, I chatted with Cheung for a while, my sole room-mate, and learned that anywhere down of Geery Street is dangerous after dark. Whoops. Also turns out he was in Legion of Honour when I was in de Young and vice versa. He prefered LoH, though this preference may have been related to his degree in fine arts. Also I should really use the cable cars instead of destroying my feet in torn, decrepit skater shoes.

4th December, 21:11

Well, today was an action packed extravaganza of multiple attractions, wasn't it. Getting up at a moderately decent time, I headed down to the California Academy of Science's temporary location. It was mainly an aquarium with a small amount of natural sciences. It's new location in Golden Gate Park looks like it's going to be totally amazing, with it's own mini rainforest and 200,000 gallon tank and coral reefs, which you could see them growing in some labs. Many small humans appeared to be running around aimlessly, but many participating in many acts of cuteness.

After this, I walked towards the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, but was first distracted by a shopping centre called Metreon. Which is most excellent. On top of grabbing a coffee, I explored a cool arcade they had, and a geeky, but still cool comic book shop similar to Forbidden Planet. I prevented myself from buying too much and made it to SFMoMA. Which the damn hippies had designated it Free Tuesday, even though I had a city pass already. No matter, I went in and checked all the same crazy all black canvases. There were some very interesting photos by Jeff Wall, and a very weird sensory area at the top that I got partially lost in, and nearly paniced. It was still interesting even if I couldn't take photos to prove it's existence. I sauntered back to the Metreon to grab a roast chicken Caesar salad with red peppers, button mushrooms and broccoli, mainly to make up for the pizza yesterday.

I also had a Mr Pibb which turns out to be a viable alternative to Dr Pepper, see "Lazy Sunday". At this point I realised I had left my bag in the SFMoMA cloakroom and so went to collect it...

Next Stop: The Da Vinci exhibition at the Metreon, which was extremely good. They had on display replicas of his notes and paintings with an informative audio tour. They had also constructed most of his engineering ideas and some were "hands on", so I thoroughly enjoyed it. Well worth the $20, even if the audio tour was a bit of a rehash of the text.

Walked back through a slightly dodgy area and returned to find I had no clean clothes. So it was laundry time and I chatted with Mike for a while. He once got held by customs for 14 hours in Missouri, which is manic. I also found out that a few blocks away, is a neighbourhood called tenderloin, which is full of gang-related roughness. Which I may have just walked through this evening. Anyway, some police stopped mike from walkthrough through there at night so he wouldn't get beaten up. Cool.

Early night tonight. Wham.

4th December, 09:00

After realising the immense pain and discomfort I'd put myself in, I decided my best course of action was to run up the steepest road in the world, or at least that I had seen. And although I got some nice photos at the top, my heart and soul nearly gave up on the way.

I recovered in the hostel while interneting and the such like. New Aussie from melbourne in room now, though he's only staying 2 nights. Sleep was extremely hot and someone was talking in their sleep, which always disturbs me. I also fell asleep still listening to straylight run.

Plan

Wednesday
Japanese Tea Garden
De Young -> Legion of Honour

Thursday
Aquarium of the Bay
Alcatraz at Night

Friday

Saturday
Exploratorium and Bay Cruise, Lombard Street, Boudin Bakery and Souvenirs

Sunday
Muir Woods/Sausalito
Haight Street

Monday

3rd December, 18:21

Today has been nice and relaxing, I got up a bit late, (9.30) then spent a while writing up yesterdays adventure. I also got more high energy rolls, an apple, a packet of turkey ham (as I was scared that I had no meant yesterday) and a Dr Pepper. I then wandered down to Macy's to get me an electric razor as I couldn't be arsed to shave off my care bear beard with my quattro. Guy there chatted with me for a while about my oyster card?! and I bought some Philips speed X-L thing, that looked pretty. I went back and spent ages shaving as I fought through my iron hair. I then rang my mummy and we chatted awhile while a man tried to use a pneumatic nail gun on me. I decided, after some Internet usage to head down to Fisherman's Wharf.

The walk took a short while, but it was interesting as it cut through china town and was nice and hilly. When I got down to the wharf I wandered around aimlessly until the fun police came to tell me I was too handsome and not having enough fun. Luckily, I bribed them with $5 for a good cause and got away with my dashing good looks intact. Ahem.

The Musee Mechanique was right next to where I was and with free admission, I strolled in. Muchos fun inside! They had loads of old old arcade machines, so mechanical scenes, firing ranges, fortune tellers, peep shows, mechanical pianos, pinball and some old digital arcade machines, like Mrs Pacman. Each one was only a quarter as well, so I spent $5 in there and had a great time. Except the arm wrestling machine thrashed me. There was even a machine that you seemed to pay to make a fake baby cry. After much time in there I came here, to a random pizza joint run by a Chinese dude. His astonishment at me ordering a medium pizza to myself forced me to prove I was just that awesome and so I ate a 14 inch grease filled pepperoni, salami and sausage pizza. Ow my heart.

2nd December, 23:00

Whoa, today was epic, I started out a bit sluggish just chilling in the lobby on msn etc. Then I wandered across the street to the little mini-mart where I bought 6 high energy fruit rolls, a bag of carrots, an apple and a sprite for about 5 dollars. I then proceeded to walk to Golden Gate Park, now this is a hell of a way. I came across some magnificent buildings which I think were City Hall Rotunda and an opera house on Van Ness Avenue. After that I staggered up Fulton Street, by which point I was feeling a bit rubbish and came across Alamo square, which is a lovely little park surrounded by very brightly painted Victorian houses, which I'm told are famous. As I carried on up the hill, although the houses were beautiful, they weren't maintained at all well, which was a shame. In fact this turned out to be the "roughest" place I saw all day, and it wasn't even rough.

One block had a strangely large amount of LPs littered around the street and outside houses. Odd. When I reached some amazing uni/church buildings there was a random Asian tourist there taking the same photos as me, just for some reason in the middle of the road, so he kept having to dodge traffic. The views down the hill were amazing, as well as to the left where there were loads of houses nestled amongst the trees on the hill. I finally reached Golden Gate Park, and whoa, it's amazingly crazy but awesome. It started out with huge trees, slightly overgrown, and quaint little paths, all quite tranquil and mysterious. Then suddenly I came across a road and the presteenly kept conservatory of flowers. A beautiful glass building, a bit like crystal palace circa 1800s, surrounded by flowers and a huge clock on the lawn.

Throughout my time in Golden Gate Park I mainly followed John F Kennedy Drive, which was closed for traffic, I presume as it was Sunday. However, it was full of cyclists, skaters, joggers and loads of rollerbladers. I even saw rollerblade dancing and at one point loads of random people just dancing salsa on a bridge.

Anyway, I then came to a large expanse of, I guess, courtyard. On one side was the apparently closed California Academy of Sciences & Aquarium. Though I think it's moved to somewhere temporary. On the other side is the de Young Museum of Contemporary Art, which looked cool, and was next to a pretty Japanese Tea Garden. In the centre is the music concourse, with a cool tree plantation and the such like. As I was walking on I came across a cool little place called the enchantment garden, which had a little pond and a number of statuettes, very nice.

I then went to the Stow Lake, and began to walk round but I started to feel really rotten by this point and had to sit down for a minute. I absorbed the view and then decided to put on some Rage Against The Machine on my portable noise creator. This soon picked me up and reduced all pain in my head. So I carried on round the lake, across a bridge onto the island in the middle and then off at a different bridge. I then played with a squirrel for a while, then a woman's dog tried to eat it, with failure luckily. We then had a conversation about how they are really rats (in fact I had just seen a rat) and I shared the anecdote of one running up Mum's leg, much to my amusement. I bid farewell to the lady and grabbed a coffee from a snack bar, which also hired out boats/peddalos/bikes. After that, I decided nothing could stop me and I would walk all the way to Ocean Beach, past football fields, Bison Paddocks, more lakes, golf courses and an ancient ( at least in USA terms) windmill.

Wow, the beach is amazing, I took many photos and then wandered up the cliff road, where there was a path to that followed the cliffs and greenery along. Amazing views across the bay and towards the Golden Gate Bridge. The twisting trail was extremely enjoyable but I'd fallen off the map and the sun would set soon, which might be an issue. I didn't worry too much though and enjoyed the various lookouts and crazy steps. Eventually I popped out on a random road somewhere, amongst a very posh but very nice neighbourhood. I wandered a bit until I came across some Avenues, and turned down 29th. Using my GPS on my n810, that had no battery left, I found California Street, that went all the way into town. So I walked.

And walked. And walked. Past village mini-marts, and people performing Hadukens on cars, past humming birds and Christmas lights, and extremely nice castle-esque Victorian houses. Eventually I hit Jones St and descended down the steepest road in the world to my hostel. I staggered in, and mapped my route on google maps, as you do, and found it was 15 miles long!!! No wonder I couldn't bend my knees properly. After relaxing a bit I went to the Hostel movie night where we saw Conspiracy Theory with Mel Gibson, and Transformers, which is still highly awesome. Free popcorn as well.

Went to my room at like 23.30 and a new guy from Korea was there, Cheung, I think. He was quite quiet. I crashed out, tired and achy. Great day though.

1st December, 22:00

Once more I have randomly blundered through a variety of obstacles with surprising ease. First of all once we got there, I explained my predicament to a nice ticketing man, with the use of some puppy dog eyes, which I keep in my bag. He then wrote randomly on a piece of paper that I could go through to San Fran, and the bus driver seemed happy to accept it. Woo! Then the driver managed to do the prepared route backwards, but I realised and still got off at the right place. I then staggered haphazardly towards my hostel, which I found far to easily. I checked in after an initial scare that I had lost my passport and a girl showed me around the hostel.

I'm on a 4 bed dorm with a Scottish guy called Mike who has lvied in Oz, America and England. He's currently going for football try outs at a San Fran based team who are gonna play in Major League Soccer, which is damn awesome.

I grabbed some bread, cheese and water and wandered through a few streets, but I was insanely tired so I went back and am now gonna crash out.

BANG.