San Francisco summary: walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, went to Alcatraz, saw the 'crookedest street in the world, drank lots of wine.

No upgrade on our flight to San Francisco sadly, but we made it from Chicago without incident. We stayed at a hotel in the Fisherman's Wharf area called The Argonaut. I could be wrong, but I think it had a nautical theme. Everything in the entire hotel was ship-related, including portholes in our cabin-style room, seashells everywhere, pictures of anchors etc. We kept waiting for Captain Birds Eye to turn up and ask for his room back. However the place is comfortable and we get lots of free Aveda products which Kath immediately swipes. This becomes a recurrent theme as we travel from hotel to hotel through America.

On our first morning we take a boat trip over to Alcatraz, which is fascinating. The audio tour of the cells is really interesting and it's amazing how small they all are. Jon gets a bit too involved with the whole 'Escape from Alcatraz' story though, mainly because all the official stuff refuses to admit anyone escaped, just saying that 5 prisoners are still unaccounted for and implying they drowned in the bay. There's lots of talk about ebb tides and how the tide would have swept them away from the San Francisco shore, but there's another island about 200 yards in the opposite direction which they could, and probably did, go to. They're making out like it's a massive mystery just because the FBI couldn't find them but Agatha Christie would have struggled to get a full hour's TV out of it I reckon.

After Alcatraz we wandered the streets, including the crookedest street in the world. It's got about 10 hairpin bends in 100 yard stretch of road because the street is so steep it's the only safe way to get traffic down. San Francisco is easy to walk around in that everything is within close proximity, but it's a real workout for the legs.

Thankfully our hotel had evening 'wine tasting' at 5.30pm. Being the unemployed layabouts we now are, any sniff of free wine and we're there, so we promptly turned up bang on time expecting a lecture on wine. What it actually turned out to be was just a large free glass of wine. Then another, then another. We hadn't done Napa Valley by this point, but it was already the best wine tasting ever. Cheers!

On our second day we intended to get the bus to Golden Gate Bridge, but missed the stop and ended up walking the whole way. Great views from the bridge but it was pretty windy so we went half way then came back again. Like the Humber bridge, only there are good bits on both riverbanks in San Francisco.

Continuing the Humberside theme, we also went to the world's second best Pier 39 (the best is in Cleethorpes - the San Francisco version hasn't even got a nightclub at the end). It did have some sea lions though, which were amusing to look at for about 3 minutes, until we realised they weren't going to do anything funny. Chicago wins on the funny animal score because of the monkeys at Lincoln Park zoo.

San Francisco seems a great city to live in, everyone is very relaxed and generally pretty happy (with the exception of the jobsworth tram conductor, who was an arse). Good times, made even better by a free bottle of wine each every teatime. Nice one Captain Birds Eye.

Love,

Jon & Kath