I've been up to a lot since I last wrote. It's been a busy few days, and we packed a lot of sightseeing and activities in. I'm finding it a little difficult to keep track of it all - at the end of the day I can't remember what we did in the morning, or if we went to a certain landmark that day or the day before. Everything is sort of blurring together. If I didn't always have either my camera or my phone with me to take photos, I don't think I'd be able to work out what I've done and when. I'm generally exhausted, but I'm enjoying myself. I've stopped actively counting American flags now because I've surpassed 100. They're everywhere. Here is a picture to prove it.
MESSAGE TO MUM
Remember when we were packing, and we waited until the night before I left to pack, and both you and Dad helped me, and we had a list and everything? Yeah, I left my pajamas at home. I've been sleeping in my new pair of trackies and some old shirts. And that onesie you bought me for this trip, which is actually surprisingly warm, although, like almost everything, it's a bit too big on me.
I miss home cooked meals! I honestly don't remember the last one I had, it must have been one that Mum made before I left. We eat out and buy takeaway food all the time, it's just so cheap and easy and we've been out most nights anyway, but I'm over it already. And I'm not one to restrict myself to eating healthy food. The food we get isn't really unhealthy - we've had Indian, all sorts of Asian food. We did have soup for lunch the other day, that was nice. The pizza wasn't healthy, I'll admit it, and I may have eaten a bag of chips for dinner the other night. Oh, and maybe this nachos wasn't super healthy.
But I miss salads, and vegetables. I had an apple almost the size of my face for lunch yesterday, it was enormous, and I bought a bag of grapes. That was one of the best decisions I've ever made. I think it's time I hit Mum up and ask for some recipes. Spaghetti and meatballs might be the way to go.
I discovered that Americans don't have slices. I told Allison I felt like lemon slice, and she didn't understand what I meant by 'slice'. What? How? So I gathered ingredients and made her a lemon slice, and forced her, her best friend Janine (who I get along with so well and is hilarious), and her mum Patty to eat it and they all liked it. Success. I've managed to introduce yet another form of unhealthy food to America.
Also, almost all of their cereal has enough sugar in it to potentially kill you. But that's enough about food.
SIGHTSEEING (Shaming Allison by being blatantly touristy)
In the last few days, we've tackled most of the main tourist attractions that San Francisco has to offer, the traditional ones that you think of when you picture S.F, but we've also gone a whole bunch of places I'd never heard of or considered going to. Which is actually pretty bad because my best friend lived here for an entire year, and I've been friends with Allison for six months and she lives here. Obviously. So here's a rundown of stuff we've been up to:
We've cruised around Pacific Heights, which is basically where most of the rich people live. The houses were enormous and beautiful and a whole bunch had fancy little driveways with scary looking steel gates and fences. The view was great because being the rich people, they live on the top of a huge hill, presumably to look down upon the poorer peasants below.
This wasn't even taken from the top of the hill. This was taken where the less rich rich people lived. I just want you to have a feel for how steep the hills are here.
We ventured over to the Palace of Fine Arts, which is a gorgeous structure with huge, impressive columns, and a massive lake, and this family of swans that were adorable and somewhat hostile.
Of course, we went to THE landmark that everyone visits in S.F - The Golden Gate Bridge.
Another place we explored was China Town, which was a lot like Melbourne's but heaps more crowded. It has the highest population density in the city, and the streets felt more narrow somehow. It was pretty cool though, and everything was a lot cheaper than the tourist areas which was an added bonus.
We walked through China Town right into the North Beach Festival, North Beach being an Italian district. There was music, and people swing dancing in the streets, heaps of ridiculously unhealthy food (I ate a funnel cake for lunch which is basically deep fried donut batter covered in icing sugar and shaped like a big tangley squiggle), and heaps of stalls.
It doesn't really count as a tourist attraction because it's only on once a year and it wasn't really that big, but it was still cool. I met a lovely man who was a candle maker from Texas, we had a great chat about Melbourne.
We moved on from there up a hill that literally had steps built into the sidewalk because it was so steep, and made it to Coit Tower, which is this majestic building here that is an important aspect of the San Francisco skyline. Inside are all these murals painted by various artists.
There were heaps of people, and we were getting sunburnt even though it was only about 21 degrees and incredibly windy. Most of the shops sold tacky souvenir crap at stupid prices, as you'd expect. My favourite part was when we were on a platform looking over the ocean, and there was a huge crowd of people all cheering and yelling. We rushed over to see what they were all looking at, and there were these two sea lions fighting over on the piers, and the crowd were picking their favourites and cheering on the one that kept pushing the other one into the water. It was hilarious. None of the other sea lions cared in the slightest.
The last place we went that I should mention is Fisherman's Wharf, of course, classic tourist destination. We got to visit Musee Mecanique, which is this super cool penny arcade made almost entirely of super old mechanical attractions. You put in a quarter and watch a bunch of puppets dance, or see a puppet execution, or watch a mechanical horse run, or have a piano play itself. It was really fun, I wanted to try everything but there's something like 300 machines in the collection. Just like in The Princess Diaries, I took on the mechanical arm wrestler.
That thing is strong! I blatantly cheated, used two hands, and it was on the weakest setting. Maybe I just suck at arm wrestling. I'm gonna go with that.
We also went on a submarine, which was tiny and narrow and Allison insisted on pressing all the buttons she could, which made me very anxious.
After that we wandered around the wharf, went past a bakery that makes sourdough animals like bears and crocodiles. I'll need to go back to explore it further, there was a wax museum that I want to check out.
ODD OBSERVATIONS - STORES
They have entire stores here that are devoted to selling magnets and keychains. Not just one store, mind you - at least five. And they are decent sized stores too. That just struck me as odd, but I guess it is a pretty large tourist destination. I also found a pretty large store that only sold socks, in hundreds of different patterns. They even had superhero socks with capes on the backs of them.
THINGS THAT WERE A LITTLE BIT DISAPPOINTING BUT OVERALL DEFINITELY FOR THE BEST
1. The Earthquake Of Doom And Terror.
Yeah, there was an earthquake. We're right on the San Andres Fault, what do you expect? It was bound to happen. I briefly entertained the thought of a quake happening while I was here, but I imagined it to be scary or impressive. In reality, the house shook for a few seconds, and I thought it might have been an earthquake, but Allison showed no response so I figured it was the garage door opening or something. But then when Janine came over later, she checked the news and it was a legit earthquake. 2.3 on the Richter Scale. I honestly think we've had bigger ones in KooWeeRup.
I mean, it's good that it was only a small one and nothing was damaged and nobody was hurt, especially since when a huge one happens it causes massive devastation, like the one in 1906 that set most of San Francisco on fire and left thousands of people homeless. But a bigger one would have been exciting. And really, it's all about entertainment value for me, not the safety of an entire city.
2. The Distinct Lack Of Mountain Lion Sightings.
Okay, this one is actually very fortunate, because people have been attacked by mountain lions about five minutes away from where I'm currently staying, and there was even a sighting at a nearby school a few years ago, so in reality I don't want to ever run into a mountain lion because it would most definitely attack, kill, and possibly eat me.
But we went on a hike today, and there were warning signs about cougars telling you to try to look big if you see one and report any sightings immediately, and even though I knew that if we did happen across a lion I'd probably scream or die or faint or be horribly attacked, a tiny part of me was hoping we'd see one. From a distance, where it couldn't see us, with plenty of space and time to get away from it.
That's about it. Yes, I realise this post was even longer than the last one. And I left out so much stuff, like going to Christian Science Sunday School, which I could write an entire separate post about, and Black Watch, this play we saw that was critically acclaimed and got a standing ovation and raised so many points about the war in Iraq as shown from a Scottish point of view. I'm going to Alcatraz tomorrow night, and Allison is giving me a personal tour because she works there, so that'll be brilliant, I'm really looking forward to that. I leave you with this majestic photo. 'Merica.
Bridie xx
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