Passion 4 Travel

United States

Day 1: San Francisco - A hot sunny day in San Francisco, started with a walk along the Embarcadero - the seafront / promenade to Pier 39, dodging the biggest collection of punk-rockers and teeny-punks I have ever seen, on their way to a concert on the pier side. San Fran, at the tip of a peninsular, is one of the World's largest land-locked harbours bound on one side by the Pacific Ocean and on the other by San Francisco Bay.
AT&T Center - San Fran Giants
Lauren, a girl from the hostel that I had hooked up with for the day, and myself fancied a trip to Alcatraz but all the tours were fully booked for days (if you plan to come to San Fran and you specially want to see Alcatraz, book up online in advance to guarantee your place) so undeterred we hired some bikes and set off towards the Golden Gate Bridge - not Golden in fact but International Orange. The journey over the bridge is approx 1.5 miles long and surprisingly very windy. From there we travelled to a quaint small settlement called Sausalito where we saw some strange rock artist at work and watched a dog being kayaked along the shore!! After sampling a local smoothie Lauren and I biked through Mill Valley, a very untouristified little town to Old Mill Park to view some large Redwoods before biking back to Sausalito to catch the ferry back to Pier 39. The ferry ride treated us to some good views of the Golden Gate Bridge and some exceptional views of Alcatraz Island.

Back in the city we hopped on one of the renowned Cable Cars for an exhilarating ride up the steep streets back to the hostel. The weather, which had been baking all day, suddenly turned very chilly about 8pm. Not what I was expecting especially after such a hot day (I got sunburnt biking) but apparently the norm here.