San Francisco

San Francisco is definitely one of the best places I've been in Cali. I think I could actually live there, there's just so much going on all the time and so much to do.

We left on Friday morning and got the Greyhound bus from Fresno to San Fran, it took about 4 hours but wasn't too bad and kinda cheap. As soon as we arrived we made our way to the hotel we'd booked. It was called the Touchstone Hotel and was on Geary street, a really good location as we were close to shops, restaurants, clubs and the Union Squre. As soon as we got there we dumped our bags and headed to Union Square to go shopping!

Union Square is full of some really expensive designer shops like Gucci, Calvin Klien, Chanel etc etc etc. We looked at some of the stores but everything was so expensive we decided to give most of them a miss. Finally we found the main shopping part of the city where the mall was with familiar shops like Forever 21, H&M and Zara and all that. I still don't like to think about how much money we must have spent........ We also checked out China Town.

Finally exhausted and a lot poorer we headed back to the hotel and then went out for dinner. We found this Tai restaurant, at least I think it was Tai.... they did a lot of noodle dishes and it was pretty yum. But John (English guy from my Uni) ordered noodle soup with silver noodles. He's like the child of our group..... and being John he couldn't get the noodles from the bowl to his mouth at all! With each attempt they kept slipping off the spoon and splashing back into the bowl. Eventually he actually ended up putting them from the bowl onto a plate and just making a complete mess.

From the restaurant we went to look for a bar to have a quiet drink in. We came across a Cocktail bar where we thought there was no bouncer on duty. As we were about to walk in this big guy sitting on a car smoking weed called us back and asked for id, or at least 'pretended' to ask for id. Me and John handed over our ids and he didn't even look at the date, he just handed them back and said have a good night! The cocktail bar was nice with the bartenders putting on a good show and the cocktails were pretty good too, although not as good as the ones from the Cocktail Factory in Preston (although A LOT cheaper!).

The next day we got up early and got a tram through San Fran to the bay area. We walked along the peirs and cheaked out a few gift shops and had lunch. We wanted to get a tour to the Alcatraz Prison but we were too late and all tours were sold out. So instead we got a tour on the rocket boat! It left from Peir 39 (the peir where all the restaurants and shops are) and took you on a 30 minute tour around the cities waterfront at a really fast speed with music blaring. It was pretty cool and stopped at certain places so you could take pictures. After the boat ride we made our way back into the city to see Lombard Street, San Fran's most crookedest street, and it really was. If you were in a car you could drive down it and it was seriously curvy.

That night we wanted to try out some of the clubs. We went to a place called 'The Slide', apparently one of the best clubs in the city, but the bouncers were seriously strict and studied our ids because they weren't American. Me and John didn't get in, so we told the rest of our group to go ahead and have a good time and that we'd find somewhere else. First we went back to the cocktail bar from the night before, the bouncer recognised us and smiled as we went in. We had fun just drinking and people watching, trying to decide which of the guys were definitely gay and which ones were just camp. Eventually we met two guys, originally from Hawaii but now living in San Fran. They took us to a club called Clives and once again there was no problem with the door man, he seemed to be more interested in the Northern Irish accent than my ID.

I've never been in a club like Clives before, it was just plain weird........ The place was huge with really high ceilings and a very luxurious feel to it. There were long red velvety curtains running from the ceiling to the floor and these really strange portraits on the wall with peoples faces who kept fading away and then coming back, with their eyes moving as if looking at people...... yeah it was just strange.

The next day (Sunday) wasn't too good for me...... we had to be out of the hotel by 11 I think and I was a 'little' hung over. By 2 o'clock I was feeling no better at all but had to get on the greyhound bus and endure a 5 hour journey back to Fresno. THIS WAS THE WORST DAY OF MY LIFE! I call it the Tolson Greyhound Experience (one of my friends, surname Tolson, had a hung over greyhound journey a few years ago so she knows what I'm talking about!)

But as usual John was there to add some comedy to everything. A girl from Bakersfield got on the bus and ended up sitting beside him. She was 18 years old and 8 months pregnant! It was an actual real life 'Juno' story. She'd been in San Francisco to visit the couple she was going to give her baby to once it was born, you know, showing them pictures and all that. So next thing we knew she had her head resting on John's shoulder so you just knew what was going to happen! When we were about an hour from Fresno me and Emelie (Swedish girl) heard a kissing sound from behind us, looking round we saw John and the pregnant girl kissing, it was hilarious, we just couldn't help laughing.

Once off the bus we couldn't help but take the piss out of him. "I swear, she asked me if I wanted to go to the back of the bus!" said John. Emelie said: "And you wonder why she's pregnant?!" Yeah, you can always count on John to amuse you.

You Know You're In Fresno When....

You have to explain to friends from out of town what
animal a "Tri-tip" comes from.

You think salsa goes on everything

Drivers think a red light is just a suggestion.

Your out-of-town friends start to visit after October,

but clear out before the end of April.

The best restaurants in town start with "El" or "Los."

You think $400 a month rent is way too high.

You know a swamp cooler is not a happy hour drink.

People break out coats when the temperature

drops below 70

The pool can be warmer than you are.

You realize that Valley Fever isn't a disco dance.

You still don't know your way around downtown.

Anywhere "and 99" is too far away.

You think you're better than people from Clovis.

Someone mentions the Fair and your thoughts immediately turn to Cinnamon Rolls.

You drive just as fast on a sunny day in June as a foggy day in December.

You have to explain to someone about "G Street."

The whole town shuts down at 11:00.

You complain about how boring Fresno is, but still make fun of people from Sanger, Selma, Reedley, etc.

You hadn't been to Manchester Center in 10 years until the movie theater opened.

You never knew how you managed before River Park.

Someone from out-of-town talks about how foggy it is and tell them, "Just wait."

You know not to take Shaw at 8, 12, or 5.

You swear there was an orchard there last week, where now there are houses.

You actually get these jokes and pass them on to other friends from Fresno.

Santa Cruz and the Coast

With the weather seriously heating up we decided to get away from Fresno for a weekend and go to the coast. We thought Santa Cruz was a good place to start because it was only a 3 hour drive or so. Renting cars is definitely one of the best ways to get around and if you fill the car it's actually really cheap!

When we arrived we made our way to the Santa Cruz Beachboard Walk. It's a long stretch of beach with classic rides and attractions, volleyball nets, and spots to just relax and sunbath. Being a weekend the place was packed, it took us probably almost an hour just to find a place to park! We spent the day swimming, sunbathing and checking out some of the surf shops.

We hadn't booked a motel or anything to stay in that night but got lucky and found a pretty decent one. It was only about a 10 minute walk from the downtown area and only $16 each for four people to share a room. After a quick shower we went out to get something to eat in a chinese across the road.

Now, being 19 and coming from the Uk where the drinking age is 18, to suddenly living in America where you have to be 21 is just a huge pain in the ass! All I wanted was a nice glass of wine (or two) with my meal. For gods sake in the UK if you're in a restaurant you only have to be 16 to drink as long as it's with a meal!

So the waitress came over to take our drinks order. My friend is 22 so she asked for a bottle of wine.
"How many glasses?" The waitress asked.
"Em..... just one," my friend replied.
"You going to drink the whole bottle to yourself?"
"Em..... yes."
I think the fact that my friend is Swedish and has an accent probably helped. The waitress probably just thought she couldn't understand her.

So the bottle came, one of my friends asked for a glass too, which he gave to me, and I spent the rest of the meal sneaking gulps of wine, replacing my glass back infront of my friend...... I felt like I was about 16. So what I learnt from that is, if you're under 21 don't go to America without a fake id!

After the meal we hit downtown Santa Cruz. It's actually quite pretty with neat sidewalks and some trees lining the street. As far as nightlife goes it's not the must exciting, there seemed to just be one club and maybe about five or so bars. I'm sure there's more if you know where to go. The club said they were full and wouldn't let us in at all, to be honest it looked a bit too grungy/heavy metalish. We tried a few bars but the bouncers seemed pretty strict on id and two of us were underage. Eventually we started chatting to this one bouncer, as soon as he heard our accents he seemed more interested in where we were from than what the date on our ids said. Eventually he said: "You coming in or what?" My English friend hesitantly handed him his id. "I didn't see nothing!" the bouncer whispered. The bar wasn't bad at all and the bartender was willing to barter with us over the price of his tequila shots.... we won.

The next day we wanted to find a more relaxing beach with less people where we could maybe try surfing a little. We first went to Capitola which looked really good for surfing but we couldn't find much of a sandy beach. I'm not even sure if we were looking in the right place but anyway, we decided to drive further along the coast. It wasn't long before we came across what we were looking for. I'm not sure what the beach is called but it had a long stretch of soft sand and nice waves crashing in, not too big for beginner surfers.

We spent the whole day just sunbathing, swimming and surfing (well, trying too). It's probably one of the best days I've had in California so far, sometimes it's best to just chill out and do nothing. That evening the last thing I wanted to do was drive back to Fresno, but I had classes the next day and it was only the beginning of term, didn't want to start off bad habits so early on.

I really want to travel further and check out Carmel and Pismo Beach. Hopefully some time soon.

Yosemite National Park

This is the first place I went when I arrived in the US. It is one of the most beautiful places I've been in California with it's mountains, trees, rivers, lakes and wildlife. I only went for a day but really want to go back and camp for at least a weekend.

The hike I went on was to Vernal Fall. Since it was summer the waterfulls weren't really that spectacular but it was still a really beautiful hike, and you can see the famous Yosemite Half Dome in the distance along the way.

At the bottom of Vernal Fall there's a pretty deep pool so me and my friends went swimming. I've never swam in water so cold in my life! So just to warn anyone who decides to take a dip! We also tried jumping off a rock into the water, that was a lot of fun. It wasn't too high, maybe about 2 metres, a good way to have some fun inbetween hiking.
I didn't see any bears this time, just a lot of squirrels, they're everywhere in California. One of my friends did see a mountain cat though! I suppose if you were to go on the longer hikes where there aren't so many people about there'd be more animals.

Fresno, California

One of the main questions I've been asked since arriving in Fresno is "Why Fresno????".

As an exchange student from the University of Central Lancashire in England I had a choice of about six colleges across America. I wanted to experience living in California. I wanted to get away from the unpredictable mainly rainy weather in the UK, surf and sunbath on the beaches, go snowboarding, party in Vegas etc etc, so I chose the California State University, Fresno!

I have to admit Fresno is not really what I expected. Everything's so spread out, to do anything you really need a car, and even then there's not that much to do. There's not much of a nightlife and the clubs and bars close early compared to Europe. Now I've been here a few months I'm getting used to it, but it's hard when you've grown up in a place where you can just walk into a city and have shops, cafes, restaurants and bars all just in front of you! Or just jump on a train or a bus at almost any time of the day to get to where you want to be. But one thing I'm not complaining about is the weather. It's the end of October and I can still lie by the pool and sunbath! Fresno locals seem to complain about the weather a lot, they'd love to see some rain, I tell them to go to UK.

Overall Fresno is not somewhere I'd like to live in the future. It's just too boring, there's not enough going on. I enjoy more of a busy town/city, bustling with life both day and night. But one good thing about Fresno is it's location. From here I can easily go anywhere in California, and have done!