Hey

Here we are again! Well we've made it to LA so no more Greyhound...yeah!

We left San Francisco on Sunday and of course in true travelling style we left it until our last night to really check out the drinking establishments of San Fran AKA the bars/pubs/clubs (in our case all of the above!), as you an imagine the journey to Santa Cruz was, well in a word, horrendous! Karen managed a little better than Jess who needed a nap at maybe 11.30am while in line for the bus!Not one of her finer moments!!

Back to the highlights of our week in San Fran though...

So we told you we went shoe shopping, on Tuesday we hired bikes with the 2 aussie girls and cycled across the Golden Gate Bridge, again Jess was slightly hungover for this, but the 8 mile bike ride soon cleared her head and it was a really awesome day! We cycled all the way to the other side to a village called Saulsilito (not too sure how to spell this) and it was adorable...the cutest of cute litte cute villages! As we are not the most athletic of people we stuggled walking around too much after so much intense exercise and took the ferry back the city and made our way back to possibly the best hostel of the trip! And guess what the evenings entertainment was at the hostel that night...beer olympics!!! Jess was thrilled at this thought! All went better than expected though, we were paired with a couple of Swedish guys whose skills saved the day!

Wednesday we went to San Fran zoo for free after using our english charm to convince the ticket man we were San Fran residents, all 5 of us...karen and i, 2 scouse girls and a german girl! Amazing, and the 6 month old tiger cubs were adorable! Next of course, we did some more shopping, this time on Haight St, supposedly where the hippy movement all began and a jem for vintage shops! We had a spare hour or so before dinner (the hostel provided the best free meals 3 times a week) so we took Heather and Char (the scousers) to happy hour at our favourite bar!

If you hadn't noticed we have come all the way to San Fran and met 2 scousers who went to the same uni as us, drink in all the same places back in liverpool and even have mutual friends with karen on facebook...and we hung out all week, they are also following us to LA, Fiji and new zealand...we suspect STA travel are selling the same ticket to other people!!!shock horror!!!

So Thursday we just spent the day organising the next few places on our trip then took a stroll to fishermans wharf and ended up in Hooters with Heather and Char...don't know how that happened!?! That evening we joined in with the hostels entertainment again and took advantage of $5 all you can drink beer!

We were up early to go to Alcatraz the next morning...it was kinda strange to be on 'the rock' but really interesting to hear the stories although 4 hours was plenty! friday night, instead of joining in with the pub crawl, we (us and the scousers) went to a baseball game! Giants V Pirates!!! The most entertaining parts of the game included: when the popcorn seller neary fell down the stairs, when the fielder almost knocked himself out by running into the wall, when the batsman broke the bat and when the ball was hit into the crowd!!! but we did get souvenier cups!!!

So saturday was our last day so we did a little more sight seeing...the coit tower with 360 degree views of the city, Lombard St, the curviest st in San Fran, the ice cream store, Washington park and then to Chinatown for dinner before meeting an old friend of Jess' from Oz for some beers, and maybe shots!!! So now we are back to the horrendous bus trip to Santa Cruz...

We arrived in Santa Cruz and couldn't check into our hostel until 5pm were forced (stranded and alone) to hunt down a pot of tea and glass of wine! The glass wine may explain why Karen then tripped over whilst walking to the hostel with her backpack on her back, her daypack on her front and bags in both hands, it was so funny Jess couldn't even get a picture for laughing! she was like a turtle rolling around on the floor...and is now sporting delightful grazes to her knees! she insists it was the shoes and the uneven pavement!?!?

When we arrived at the hostel we were a little disstressed to find out about the 11pm curfew and no alcohol rule!!!so instead we treated ourselves to an amazing meal on the wharf!

Unfortuantely it was really cloudy the next day so we went shopping again (our bckpacks are at bursting point!) and then the cinema before chilling out in the hostel.

The next day we bussed to Santa Barbara and then hiked down the high street with our backpacks to the hostel, a bizarre place which also didn't allow alcohol(what is with Americans?)! Gorgeous little town. the first day we hung out around the shops because it was cloudy again and then that evening made some friends and found a loophole in the no drinking law!!! a grassy area and a brown paper bag...job done(we weren't alone in this)!!!Yet again the peeps we met that night were northerners, just like being at home!

We nursed the hangovers on the beach the next day as it was really lovely weather and the beach was a 2 minute walk away...jess should have remembered to wear sunscreen and now looks like a crabstick, karen did wear sunscreen and still looks like a crabstick!!! That night we went out again, this time taking it easy as we didn't want a repeat of last weeks bus journey, although still didn't get to bed till 3am!

Arrived in LA today. We are staying in a hostel on Hollywood Boulevard, so far it seems nice and as you can tell we are taking advantage of the free internet!

We fly to fiji on Monday, hopefully we will update the blog again before we leave the US but no promises and we were going to update the pictures but not allowed to do that here, sorry!

Gotta go, Brad and Ange just called!!! xxxxx

P.S sorry about the really long message again!!!!