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.