We arrived in San Francisco on Thursday 13th December 2007 and began our visit by walking up one of the hills with our backpacks on!!! Not a good idea at the best of times let alone when you have just travelled for 8 hours on the greyhound.

Anyway after finding our hotel (in the end) we have really enjoyed our trip to San Francisco and it has definately been the best city we have visited.

On Friday we went for a walk along Fishermans Wharf, which is really touristy but actually quite nice at the same time. We had some really good food here and they have lots of fresh fish. The highlight of fishermans wharf is the Sea lions which live in the harbour area, there were between 30 - 40 all lying on a jetty and swimming in and out. This was a surprising treat, especially as we had only ever seen them in captivaty before.

Throughout the wharf and bay area are bicycle rental shops that advertise "bike the bridge", so we decided that this may be a good thing to do. After a hearty breakfast on Saturday we hired some bikes and set off. The guy in the shop gave us some maps with routes that exclude the hills and basically there were two routes to take, 8 miles or 16 miles and then you get the ferry back.

Unfortunately Tony is not the best on a bike and after about 5 minutes (when we reached the first hill) he had to get off and walk his bike. However inspite of this we had a great cycle across the bridge and saw some magnificent views. We reached the small seaside village after about an hour and half, where we stopped for coffee and cake.

As it was still early and we were feeling fairly fit we decided to continue on for the 16 mile route to the next town and then get the boat back at 6pm. We timed it so that we had lots of time to get there before dark and off we set.

Again the ride was very picturesque and not many hills, however by the time we reached the village we were both pretty tired and looking forward to a leisurely boat ride back. The only thing was that in true Ali & Tony style, we had the wrong timetable and had missed the last boat by about 2 hours. Neither of us liked the prospect of a 16 mile bike ride in the dark back the way we had come, so we looked for a hotel. Unfortunately there was only one hotel for miles and it was full.

We resolved ourselves to the cycle home and stopped to buy torches and glow sticks as we had no lights!!! We also purchased the biggest can of Monster each (an energy drink in US), two snickers and two bananas (we needed the energy boost!). After cycling non-stop for just over 3 hours we made it back to the hotel. The next day when we took the bikes back to the shop neither of us could even get on the bikes and had trouble sitting and walking for the whole day!

In hindsight this is very funny and another story we have to tell but at the time it was a nightmare!!!

For the rest of our time in San Francisco we purchased a bus/cable car pass and rode the cable car everywhere! I really enjoyed going up and down the hills but Tony not so much. I even had a go at hanging on the side (like you see on TV).

On Monday we went to Alcatraz, which was amazing. We had an audio tour, so as you walk around the prison and the Island you can hear what it was like from former prison officers and inmates.

Today we are flying to Hawaii for the final stop on our trip across America. We are looking forward to the sun as the weather in California has been cold and wet!