I decided to start my blog with a few travelling locations I have already experienced. I'm doing this as sort of a diary I can look back on myself also(better do it now or memories will vanish). This Trip was the first real long journey in my life as previous plane journies were just a short jump across the water to London to see the majestic gunners in action. It was time to test myself away from home(Ireland) at last. It was a simple J1 visa and I was travelling with my good friend Kevin and his mate wee Tommy from Donegal(whom i had not met previously).

My wonderful mother dropped me up to the airport and off we went. I have to say I thought plane journies were great and piss easy but this was a totally different breed of a journey. 12hrs which is 11hrs longer than my longest destination yet and I have to admit it was tough. The room sucked and aches in my legs last half the journey. However, I wasn't as bad off as the lads. I had a spare seat beside me and the boys were cramped in the middle isle and considering Kevin is 6ft 3in this sucked big time. Anyway, we finally arrived and received our first stamp's on the auld passport. Apparently the more you had the cooler you were. So we had one and were delighted.

Have to go..... be back soon(going to see Tommy Tiernan - Designer Wino) TBC.....

Hi all, I'm back!! Where was i? Oh yeah, we got the train into Down Town San Francisco greet by a scorching hot day and many many people(considering its the 4th most populated city in the California and 13th in the US with 7.4million living in the Bay Area). The excitement really hit us a that point. We've arrive in the States. Buildings were high but there wasnt as many high rise buildings as you see in the movies but still high enough to to kill yourself off(if you were pushed of course). The first striking aspect of San Francisco were the hills. Hills Hills Hills..... i mentioned it 3times to clarify how hilly and how steep the hills are and energy draining. The whole area was formed by earthquakes and volcanos so this may explain the reasons for the God for saking hills.

First step was to find our hostel then find irish bars and go on the lash, as ya do. We managed to find our place of stay after giving some scruffy looking dude a dollar for directions. This was our first encounter with what we call beggars and it sure was wasnt our last. After a couple of days wandering around site seeing and so on we decided to look for "jobs" :-) Makes me laugh now but we thought yeah no problem but it turned out to be a hard nut to crack - this job hunting craic that is. we managed to get a number for shared accomodation in the Sunset area and would you believe it was a group of Irish girls sharing with us. The appartment consisted of 2bedrooms, living-room/kitchen and a small bathroom and shower. another thing which makes me laugh is apparently in the US they DONT FURNISH accomodation for u. so we were all confined to the floor for most of our stay there. That is until me, Kev and Tommy stumbled upon a double matress, a fuathan couch/bed and a couple of chairs which was a big help. We lived only a stones throw away from the Golden Gate Bridge which was cool and had the golden gate park literally next door. All was going fine but the whole JOB thing was really catching up on us as money doesnt last long over here, although when you drink a case of corona everyday and a top up of pints in the local Irish pub afterwards its not gonna last is it? :-)

The Irish Bar was to be our daily social place if you want to call it that but the world cup was being played in Germany and games started early so drinking started early. (us Irish dont need much of an excuse - considering ireland didnt even make the tornament ha ha...) We got very friendly with the owners and they really did look after us and after a few weeks Tommy was given a job. The owners were Donegal men too so ya know what they say "look after your own". :-) We all managed to get a week or so with a chippy from Monaghan so that kept us ticking over in the money department. Until that great day came and we got work with a Funiture removal company(cant rem the name).

They were Irish, as most of them are, and Tom O'Connor was the boss mans name and he's a Kerryman. Such a weird accent, crossing an american accent with a kerry accent, very funny indeed. Anyway the first day was easy and we decided to celebrate on getting a job that evening. Two of our new co-workers came with us, American Eoin and Armagh boy. We drank another crate of corona back in the gaff and then headed to the two bars in the direction of the bridge. Great night, great fun and cant rem too much but i rem the next day we didn turn up for work. When i think of it now i laugh as we just started laughing ourselves. Tom called that following monday and gave us a lecture and whatever so we got our jobs back :-) worked with another guy from Dublin who was a bit of messer and liked to slag the new guys as ya do but he didnt know what he was getting himself in for with Kevin. I dont need to say more, he wasnt long about calming it a bit ha ha.... However work didn last too long and we were back to doing nothing except going to the pub.

Forgot to add we tried a bit of Hurling in the hope of finding work. This was with the local team called Na Fianna whom we heard about form Joe Fitz in Rathdowney. I think it was two training sessions and we jacked it in, too much sweating and hurt and no jobs in return. Still a bit of fun though. We of course visited Alcatraz, Golden Gate Bridge, the famous Nob hill, Bay Bridge, Golden Gate park, Chinatown and we were there for the Gay pride parade which was an all day bender on Haight st festival(hippies and queers everywhere) Was an experience alright considering I dont take kindly to the gays.

Ah I'm gonna leave on the note that I thoroughly enjoyed San Francisco however I'd only recommend it for a quick stop over. Not a great deal to get done there and the amount of beggars is a real big turn off. So Hope you like my experiences of San Francisco and hope I wasnt being too judgemental on what is a beauitful place. Ya hear that Kev!?