What can I say about our first Greyhound experience?? It went from bad to worse. We had a brochure inviting us to the local greyhound station to enjoy 15% off ticket prices, when we arrived we were informed that the brochure was misleading and that these tickets could only be purchased online (at this stage we had 20 minutes before our bus left as the greyhound chick had taken 30 trying to find out if she could do the discount for us, absolutely hopeless service). So we were told to pay for the single ticket from Vegas to San Fran for $170 and then we could buy the 60 day pass we had planned online with the 15% discount (which defeated the purpose as we'd be paying more than buying all of our tickets individually.
Anyway we eventually got our tickets and were put at the front of the line, which was becoming a bit disgruntled as the bus was already late and no one had boarded yet. Now greyhound have a thing where they sell as many tickets as they can and its first come first served for seats, if you don't get on too bad wait around for the next bus (usually 2 to 5 hours). People are pushing and shoving trying to get on and the security dude is doing nothing. We take off an hour late and the bus is not taking the route advertised online so we are going backwards to LA before a "short" stopover then another bus to SF. Get to LA ok and wait for our bus which is almost 2 hours late, in the meantime we witness a fight between 2 black ladies in their 40's to 50's (hair pulled ,pushing and shoving) struggling to get on another bus. Nat is freaking out by this stage and never wants to ride greyhound again. We're told that the driver will make up time on his way to SF by having shorter stopage times at each of the drop offs. The driver then gets his knickers in a knot and decides to pull over on the side of the road each time the noise on the bus gets too load from people talking or generally complaining about being late (so the already irate passengers are getting more and more annoyed at this bloke who continues to slow down our progress). We eventually arrived safely in SF about an hour and a half after the ETA.
San Francisco is everything I've heard and more, a great experience! Our first day (Easter Sunday) we decided to do a free walking tour of SF organised by the hostel. We arrive to find out that we are the only ones signed up. Our very "camp" guide explains on the way that he will be stopping at times and asking for volunteers to do readings (dude there is only 2 of us surely we can just pass the piece of paper and read for ourselves!!). Anyway about an hour into the 4 hour walking tour and Nat and I had pretty much had enough so after he had shoved the Castro article in Junior's hands for him to read aloud he continued on around a corner only to find out that we had not followed him, yet we had turned back the other way and done a runner. Note: Castro is the gay district of San Fran - we were one of many, many few that weren't a same sex couple walking around holding hands, I have to admit its a bit of an eye opener to see so many dudes holding hands!
After leaving this bloke and then seeing him through a shop window pacing up the street looking for us we stumbled across a park that was holding an Easter festival. There we witness a beauty pageant (males in drag) and a drag queen singing and all sorts, much better than our walking tour and we got to see the real SF. Nat asked why the gay guys were wearing bunny ears as she thought it must've been a "gay thing" before a look from me reminded her it was Easter.
The following day we hired bikes and rode the 26km route along the coast over the Golden Gate bridge to Sausalito and Tiburon, some very beautiful picturesque housing and views (and god it felt good to be back on a bike again). People were actually surfing waves underneath the Golden Gate bridge! There were a couple of climbs on the ride which Nat had to jump off the bike and walk (check photo ... funny) but the 3 - 4 hours we rode was awesome weather and Nat loved the fact there was a candy store at the end.
Our hostel in San Fran had the best hot chocolate and a "to die for" Chocolate cake that we treated ourselves to when we arrived back. The following day we were going to Alcatraz and then I would be driving the 635 miles (1013 kilometres) to Portland.
We tried to get on an earlier ferry to Alcatraz as ours was at 12.45 and we wanted to get on the road as soon as possible but unfortunatley couldn't so to kill a bit of time we decided to walk back to pier 39 in the hope of finding the "Bush-man" - there is an infamous black guy who crouches next to trees and bushes holding a few branches across his face as a disguise and as people walk buy unsuspecting he jumps out and scares the living s#!* out of them. Note: he then tries to charge people to have their photo taken with him or for people standing around to take photos.
We were unable to bump into the bushman but were drawn to the sounds of someone calling out "Junior...Junior." We turned and saw Adam Bolton and gf Erin from good 'ol Adelaide, we couldn't believe it! We worked out that we would be in New York at the same time so have arranged to go to a Yankees game and hit the town, can't wait!
Alcatraz was very interesting to say the least. The audio tour was great. making you feel like you were actually there in the day. Unfortunaltey we wanted to get on the road asap so had to rush the tour a bit in order to catch the ferry back to mainland at 2, however it was amazing to see the remnants of the famous grenade explosion and the actual cells the wardens were held captive in one attempt to escape by a few of the innmates. The freakish experience was being able to walk into the cells in D-block and those of solitary confinment...
Unfortunatley we didn't see any sharks in the waters surrounding the island but Junior did threaten to throw me overboard a few times.
Once back on the mainland we sprinted to Hertz to pick up our car and start our road trip to Portland.
