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We arrived at LAX on Sunday 23rd, we landed 6 hours before we took off, because of time zones we went back in time and we had Sunday for a 2nd time. As we were catching a greyhound that evening to San Francisco, we booked into a hotel for the day as we were both very tired. So we spent our 1st day in Los Angeles asleep in a hotel, but the best thing was that we had a double bed each, I love America and their over indulgences. We grabbed our 1st very greasy meal from Denny dinner, to eat on the way to the greyhound station. We had to get a shuttle to Union Station and then catch a cab to the Greyhound station as it was in a bit of a dodgy part of downtown LA. The station was full of very odd people and I wasn't 100% comfortable there, they also had strict security and took away my pocket knife/ tool as they said it could be a weapon. And to top it off our bus driver was a bit of a Hitler and was on a massive power trip, so that was fun to deal with. We were finally on the road by 11.30pm and the bus was cold and uncomfortable, it stopped at a ridiculous hour in the morning somewhere very cold for a food stop and to top it off I couldn't sleep as my body clock was so messed up.
We arrived in San Francisco very early in the morning and it was nice and cold and we were jacket less. After walking around in circles trying to find the bus with another girl from our greyhound bus, we caught a cab to our hostel. As I did not sleep very well on the bus I was knackered, I was already suffering quite badly from the jet lag, but Jess dragged me out of the hostel, that wasn't before we enjoyed our free pancake breakfast at our hostel. As it was a bit chilly (even though the hostel told us that it was their warmest day) we needed coats to be able to walk around the city. Jess managed to find everything she needed in H&M, I did not have so much luck. We bought new American phones in Westfield, and walked around the shopping area and I finally found a coat in Macy's. So now both of us were toasty, we walked around Market Street down to the piers. We took a photo of what we thought was the Golden Gate Bridge, late to find out that it was bay bridge. Then we walked up to the old fisherman's wharf, which was now full of boutiques and restaurants. We grabbed some lunch and sat outside to watch San Francisco go by. We walked up to the Embarcadero, and stopped at pier 39, which was the touristy pier with all the shops, sideshows and of course the famous seal colony. This is also where we bought our 'I <3 S.F' t-shirts which has started our collection. After this we visited the historical penny arcade which was very creepy and Jess was not keen on the large laughing mechanical lady that I paid for, so we made a swift exit and caught a tram to Chinatown. We had an awful meal in this dead restaurant, but there wasn't much life anywhere in Chinatown. We have now decided that we are done with Chinatowns and we do not need to visit anymore. By about 10pm I was extremely jet lagged and had drunk half a bottle of wine, so I literally crawled into my bunk bed for a good night sleep.
I awoke on Tuesday 25th January a bit dazed due to my weird body clock, but I was excited as we were going to Alcatraz, We caught a boat over to the 'rock' to go on the island tour, the tour started at the bottom where we watched a short video about Alcatraz and its history. I learnt about all the famous prisoners like AL Capone, the escape attempts and the Native American's attempt to reclaim the land when the prison was abandoned.We then walked up the hill on the self-guided tour of the island, where you can look at the exterior and also the burnt out buildings that are left on the island, which was for staff housing, barracks, store rooms and the morgue. The most surprising thing that I learnt on the tour was that families of the guards all lived on the island, around 300 people lived on this small island next to the prison, the children said that they had the happiest childhood; and described it as if there was one bad neighbourhood in their neighbourhood, which was the prison. We went on the audio tour of the cell block, which took us around the cells, the different guard rooms, taught us about the different escape attempts and about the different types of inmates. The tour of the cell block was really interesting and I enjoyed it a lot. After walking round the rest of the island gardens we took the boat back to the city and civilisation. For lunch we had their world famous Clam Chowder in sourdough bowls. After lunch we caught the bus up to Coit tower, but of course with our luck the tower lift was out of order so we couldn't get up to the top, but we still got great views of the skyline of city and I could see the big pointy building that I recognise from Charmed. I also really wanted to see the curved road of Lombard, so we walked up, and when I mean up, it was extremely steep up to the curved street, we watched the sunset over the city and took lots of photos and then jumped on the bus back to our hostel. For dinner we were recommended to go to a restaurant called 'Tommy's', which was a very stereotypical seedy American bar, it was in a bit of a scary area but it was great. You grabbed your food for the server in the corner; I had sloppy joes, and then we grabbed a beer whilst sports were on all the TVs. We spent the rest of the evening sat at the bar drinking cocktails and chatting with the bar man and slowly getting drunk.
On the 26th we had a nice lie in, and then went to Golden Gate park, we had a bit of wander around but you had to pay to go into all the different parts and we were a little over botanical gardens, so we made a swift exit. We caught a bus to Haight-Ashbury, where the US hippie movement began, The area was a bit like Camden, but was a quiet and there wasn't much activism going on there these days, just lots of people smoking weed, but then everyone in San Francisco seems to smoke weed and the laws are quite lacked in this state. As there wasn't much to do here we went to the Castro, the large gay area, and it was HUGE. On our way there we got a little lost as we walked the wrong way. We finally found where we wanted to be, we knew this because the streets were lined with rainbow flags. We grabbed some lunch and some wine; the waiter was surprised we wanted a whole bottle at 2pm. We found the main strip in the Castro and HELLO GAY TOWN; it was a huge gay neighbourhood in the middle the city and it just had a great atmosphere.We went on a bit of an afternoon bar crawl, we went to the main bar on the strip named after Harvey Milk, and then we hoped to a couple of bars, one we went in was playing Ellen and served very strong Vodka drinks which took me a little over the edge of tipsy. At some point during the day we realised that the bridge that we thought was the Golden Gate wasn't actually the right one, so we caught the bus and tram, to the pier, but as we arrived the police were closing the pier but they allowed us to take a photo. On the way home we bought a chicken and some wine and sat in our hostel eating and getting drunk.
The next morning we caught the Greyhound back to LA. The bus ride was a day bus and it was very slow and boring. I really loved San Francisco, although there was an extreme amount of homelessness. It was a very different city than ones I have been to, it seemed to be very liberal, and there seemed to be so many different cool neighbourhoods and of course the tram and trolley system were brilliant to ride on. I will be coming back again.
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