San Francisco is just an excellent excellent city. As soon as I stepped off the bus, I could just tell that there was something nice about the place that I was going to like. To be honest, I think the sunny weather had a lot to do with it!
On arriving in the USA Hostel on Post St. I immediately crashed out for a hell of a sleep after not getting enough rest on the train - I was absolutely knackered. On waking up, I made a most horrendous discovery - that I'd left my beloved black and grey stripey hoodie on the train. Thankfully, on a quick nip down the road to H&M, I managed to find the exact same hoodie on the out-of-season sale rail, the last one of its type left - a great relief. Also managed to find what may have been my closest contender yet in my quest for the perfect wooly hat.
I took this first morning as an opportunity to go up and look at Lombard Street, but I was kinda disappointed when I actually got there. I guess I should've known - it's just a wiggly road down a hill at the end of the day. Next came a bit of lens shopping, taking advantage of the weak dollar to buy me a nice Nikkor 85mm f/1.8. It got its first use in anger after meeting up with Kelley and Francis again, the couple I'd met on my first visit to Portland.
In the afternoon, Francis and I went on a little expedition to a dump. Thankfully however, the reason was that there was an art show on at the dump with a bunch of works made from found objects. It wasn't great in terms of the artwork, but it was quite an interesting setting and did a good job of saving me from getting trapped in tourist hell! That evening, I was invited up to a pleasant wee dinner party at their flat, where I mostly admired Francis' extensive collection of horror movie memorabilia.
The next day, I had decided to just go for the tourist thing and make a trip out to the golden gate bridge. The bridge itself was pretty impressive, but I found the area around the bridge to be a lot more interesting. There was a pretty cool old historic fort at one end of the bridge, and a pretty cool pier where a whole bunch of old guys were out fishing. I even managed to catch sight of a Sea Lion out for a wee swim, which was pretty cool.
That evening, I met up again with Roxanne from the train journey, and she showed me around some of the cooler sights in the city by night. The next day, Roxanne, her friend Meredith and I would go on a nice wee adventure to what I'd definitely call the highlight of my trip so far - the Pet Cemetery in the Presidio. It was a totally surreal experience, with the majority of the ex-pets belonging to servicemen and women who had been stationed there when the Presidio was still a big military base. Although the cemetery had officially closed in the 70s or something, there were still a lot of "new" burial sites, implying that the cemetery lived on!
After the bizarre joys of the cemetery, we carried on down to a lovely wee beach on the Pacific coast and sat for a few nice hours in the sun.
I have to stop writing just now, but I'll carry this on in another post soon!
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