We flew in to SF from Toronto on Tuesday morning. We're staying at the Travelodge near the city centre. It's not in the best part of town and calling a glass of OJ and a pastry a continental breakfast is a bit of a joke but I'm sure it's nicer than some of the hostels we'll stay in. Tuesday afternoon we went on a Golden Gate tour which takes you over the bridge and gives you a bit of history on the building of the bridge back in the 1930s. On Wednesday we must've walked about half a marathon up and down the hilly streets of SF. You can tell you're in earthquake country as it's just hill after hill like a series of waves. You'd get pretty fit walking around this city. We thought about renting a car but I'm glad we didn't as driving around on a 40% gradient is definately an aquired skill! In the morning we went down to the bay and hopped on the ferry over to Alcatraz, about a mile into the bay. We were given a history of "the rock" in the days when it was a fort, before it became a prison. After that we went up to the prison building. We took an audio tour which tells you about life in Alcatraz, its most famous residents and the escape attempts made by some of the inmates. In the afternoon we did our own walking tour of the city.
Thursday (today) we went out to Marin County on the other side of the Golden Gate bridge to a place called Muir woods to see the Redwoods. Redwoods are massive (300ft) old (up to 2000years) trees that grow in certain parts of Calafornia. After that we went down to a little town called Sausalito for some lunch before getting the coach back to the city.
We fly to LA tomorrow afternoon, which only takes an hour. After that comes the mind numbing 14 1/2 hour flight to Sydney.
