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Hello again,
Sorry for the long delay - we have been trying to upload Las Vegas and San Francisco pictures onto the blog, but it has been near enough impossible. We have spent nearly 10 hours in various internet cafes trying to sort it out. At one stage we walked into what we thought was an internet café got a coffee and started using the free internet (only to find out that it was actually a lawyers office - Coffee and Counsel??!!). We are now in an internet/gaming place surrounded by people playing lord of the rings - shouts of "can someone please kill the large Orc that is eating my head" are very common!!
We left Las Vegas about even (partly due to Verity putting our last few dollars on the green 0 on the roulette table - it came in - 36-1!!) and went onto San Francisco which was fantastic; it was warm and sunny in the day, but quite cold when the fog came in at night.
The hotel was interesting - located in easy reach to everywhere - and the owner "Randy" was very pleasant. ("Hi, I am Randy!" was the first thing he said - brilliant). First day we went for a walk to try and get our bearings and find the seafront/piers as we had read it was a lively part of town - we totally underestimated how hilly the place is - after walking for an hour over a huge hill (aptly named "Nob Hill") we arrived at the sea front and found a fantastic little bar serving ½ price drinks (see the picture of the pint of Widmer) and showing live blues. We decided to get the street car home (disappointingly not named Desire) as our legs could not have made it up the hill again. People were just hanging off the sides of the cable car!
Melaney (verity's sister) joined us a day after we arrived so late nights and early mornings were on the cards. She arrived at around 7.30pm san fran time, we went for some food and headed home around midnight, this was actually 8am UK time and Melaney had been up 27 hours, not bad going!!
We took an open top sightseeing bus tour around the city so we could get a feel for the places we wanted to see - then found out that it was valid for 3 days - so we then used it as public transport (saving money - PJ), the downside being we had to listen to the same tour guide 5/6 times…!
Visiting Alcatraz was the highlight of the stay and I hope the pictures express how eerie a place it is. Learning how the inmates lived and their escape attempts was a real eye opener. We tried to lock the doors when verity got into the solitary confinement cell, but it would not move.
We also found a bar called Amnesia (I kept forgetting what it was called) where we watched some contemporary bands - we thought we had walked into the bar from the film "dusk 'til dawn" - some extremely strange looking, scary people.
Walking home one night we stumbled across a bar/restaurant called "Lefty O'Douls" - which had a pianist (looked like Phil Blackwell) who would play songs on request. We sat around the piano for a couple of hours asking for songs from a lot of different bands UB40, Beatles, Van Morrison and Elvis to name but a few - verity can not remember getting home that night!
We visited a bar that was located on the 52nd floor of a building with panoramic views where we watched the sun go down over the golden gate bridge and the city.
As you know we are very organized people so the day before we were to leave San Francisco we thought it appropriate to sort out accommodation and travel plans for Los Angeles. We stumbled across flights for 25 pounds each!!! Much better than a 10 hour coach journey!!! We nearly didn't book as it seemed too good to be true. We're currently in Los Angeles and will update our blog before we leave next week, before heading to Peru for the Inca trail.
Hope you are all well.
Missing you - V and A xx
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