San Fransisco (and surrounding areas)

Day 10 Blogging, Peep the Van in the Back from S-bux

Day 11  Friday  Oct 22 - (Fort Bragg --> San Rafael)


Today we experienced how nasty the rain can be in California. After driving around searching for a campsite, we finally found one called camp Taylor...niice. Turns out that Camp Taylor also had the worst raccoons we have encountered yet as well. Jason and I tried all night to hit them with pieces of firewood and rocks, but to no avail. That night, the raccoons had eaten their way through our dish container and spread garbage all over the campsite. Wood here was also $7 a bundle, so we decided to only buy two and gather the rest of the wood illegally instead.  We have been lucky so far with good weather, but this rain really needs to stay away.

-Taylor

Wharf

Day 12 Saturday Oct 23 - (San Rafael--> San Francisco)


We made the decision after last nights fiasco of trying to find a campsite in the San Francisco vicinity and how they are very few and far between that we would spend the night in a hostel. We tried to do a little pre planning and research of hostels to find one before we got to the city, but the Macdonalds we stopped at had no plug in for the computer and it's too frustrating using my little ipod to figure things out so we just headed into the city and decided to head to Union Square where we'd figured there would be a bunch of different hosteling options. But the rain and us not knowing the city at all proved this to be more difficult, and driving a big camper van around a city isn't too easy. So we decided that we would head down to Fisherman's wharf to get our bearings a little bit. We found a parking lot which would charge us $25 dollars for the day, and then right across the street was a stop that we could park in for free for up to 2 hours, so we made the wise decision to park for free. We walked the rainy wharf and bought our Alcatraz tickets for Sunday afternoon because the night tours are all booked up until November. We decided that it would be  good time to call around some hostels for the night, and we got in touch with a Hosteling International downtown San Francisco which had bed for us. Heading back downtown the second time was just as frustrating and difficult the first time, and Taylor ended up having to just let Jason and me off so we could figure out what parkade could handle a car of Andy's size in downtown San Francisco. Overall we realized that San Fran is not built for larger vehicles.

-Lisa

Alcatraz shot!

Golden Gate Bridge

$10 XL Pizza

Day 13 Sunday Oct 24th (San Francisco - San Francisco)


        Last night, the San Francisco Giants won Game 6 to advance to the Baseball World Series, which is a big deal and the city truly came alive, people honking while the drove and partying well into the night. It rained all night and was raining again in the morning so we were glad to be staying at the hostel. We made a decision on the fly to spend another night in San Francisco because we had tickets to Alcatraz and the van was safely stored away in the underground parking. Luckily, the guy vallet parking the van gave us a city map with 4 different hostels within a couple of blocks so we went and checked into a new hostel.

We then headed down to Union Square, which I soon learnt wasn't a park which it looked like on the map. It turns out to be the busiest shopping center I've ever been to. We decided to grab a bite in the food court before we headed down to the wharf. Finding a good deal downtown San Fran is hard to do, so Taylor and myself decided to jump on a $10 XL pizza which would keep hunger at bay for the rest the day. 

          It was raining extremely hard, at times it seemed like a hurricane, but we jumped on the tram and headed down to the wharf, which turned out to be a little premature. It was raining so hard and so windy that the wharf was pretty much abandoned, it didn't matter how good your jacket was, all of our pants and shoes were soaked. Instead of waiting for the boat to Alcatraz we decided to hit a pump for a few hours to dry off, 6 coranitas for $13 seemed like a good deal, so 3 buckets later we found ourselves running for the boat to Alcatraz. On the ride over the clouds parted, it started clear up and the rain stopped. Alcatraz and it's audio tour was the best and the most expensive tourist attraction we've visited ($26). We felt that it was one of those things that we had to do, we wanted to go on the night tour, but apparently it's pretty popular and booked about a month in advance. By the time we got back to SF, found a trolley and got back to the hostel we were all pretty tired and still wet.
         We made dinner around 9, fired off a quick game of golf in the rec room along with a pre-mixed bottle of the cheapest vodka money can buy and diet 7-up. We decided to go and explore a local bar down the street which we figured was closing at 12. Turns out SF doesn't sleep, even on Sunday nights. We decided to explore the city and go on a self guided pub crawl. We visited the local dive bar, a spanish pub and ended up at a asian bar all of which were filled with interesting characters who were a little puzzled why 3 young 'white kids' were wandering around but were extremely friendly and it made for a really fun spontaneous night. People at all 3 of the bars gave us advice on what to do the following day, one our buddy Duke walked us to a 24 hr Thai restaurant and made us a map of SF on a napkin for the best walking route to AT&T Ball Park which I proceeded to lose/use after a slice of 'CHEEZZZYYY pizza' which we acquired after the 24-hr Thai restaurant turned out to close at 2am on Sundays. Eventful day over!

Day 14  Monday  Oct 25 - (San Francisco --> Santa Cruz)


We had a few main goals to accomplish today. 1 - Checking out the AT&T center, home of the San Francisco Gaints, and 2 - Taking Free andy down the famous Lombard street. The walk from the hostel down to Market street was filled with many local shops and a variety of people. Once down at the water, we wandered down to the baseball stadium and checked out the plaques and statues outside. The highlight of the day was definitely taking the van down the tight corners of Lombard street though. We chickened out the first time and got out to make sure the van would actually fit down the street. After agreeing that it would be no problem, we hopped in the van and started the venture down. Everyone was looking at us and pointing as we dropped in from the upper street and some were even taking pictures of us! Everyone ahead of us was taking such a long time to go down in their small cars, we decided to stop and let all the cars ahead of us get to the bottom so we could go down the street as fast as possible. I would consider this one a victory against the state of California after the signs clearly told us that vans were prohibited...we'll be bock Ahnold.

-Taylor

Day 15 Tuesday October 26- ( Santa Cruz)

We decided that we needed a semi relaxing beach day, and the weather has turned out to be so nice that Santa cruz was the perfect location for that. We packed up all of our camping gear and headed back into the city. We cruised the boardwalk and found parking for the day and headed out for our walk. We walked down the wharf and found a store that was selling everything for pretty much half off. We all ended up walking out with new bathing suits, getting us ready for the warm weather ahead. The sun is very welcomed by us and we all have rosy cheeks and wind burns from being outside. We found a little cafe with wireless (a change from the regular Mickey dees) to do some blogging and me and Jason had a heated game of Jenga, resulting in me losing a bet and a couple dollars to buy him beer.

-Lisa