Lazy Keef

As most of you know we are now back in blighty, and have been since Christmas. However we have been extremely lazy and not posted anything from Buffalo, Boston or New York yet. I will get my arse in gear but to tide you over here's a link to our photo from the Jack Daniels website. The lady in front with a blue shirt & me found a leaking barrel in the store and sneakily tried a few drips of beautiful, oak aged booze!

Amazingly, Tash is NOT wearing the green spotted jumper

We see D.C.

Firstly, may I apologise for the extremely long post below, we did loads so I’ve bulleted stuff to make it a bit more digestible.

After a fairly hefty drive, punctuated by an overnight stop at proper motel and some fine southern cooking, we eventually arrived at the nation’s capital – Washington DC. There was a massive load of hassle with dropping the car, don’t ever bother renting from National; they’re a bunch of clowns. The place we were staying at wasn’t bad, a nice little room with a kitchenette and a single bed in the naughty corner for Joe. It seemed to be run by an eastern European version of the dumpy friend in “King Of Queens”, but this didn’t deter from his helpfulness.

DC was a bit of a strange place really, loads of huge administrative buildings, hardly any shopping areas, tons of parks containing memorials, but no-one looking all that official and the unfortunately high quota of homeless people, all set out on a very precise grid with a stretch of sidewalk closed on nearly every street. As suggested by guides & locals we explored on foot, and as virtually every exhibit is in a public building it was nearly all free, we went to so many places. If I’ve missed any links then you all know where Google & Wikipedia are.

The White House – An obvious place to start and totally not the building you’re thinking of. For years I always thought the White House had a dome thing like St. Paul’s Cathedral, but that is the Capitol and so in a way the White House is a bit of a let down. However the building itself is quite grand with loads of guards with machine guns mooching around the grounds, a CND permanent protest outside of the front gates, some guys playing street hockey nearby and loads of squirrels. No sign of Dubya, although we did see Jessica Simpson all dolled up one evening.


Constitution Gardens – We had a nice walk through here, well as nice as a walk can be through an area dedicated to memorials. The World War II memorial was actually designed pretty well, with several pillars representing the 50 states & affiliated US territories all circled around a pool and 2 gates for the Atlantic & Pacific oceans. This was at one end of the rectangular mirror pool you see in movies, and at the other end was the Lincoln memorial. A huge pillared building that contains a very impressive marble statue of the country’s 16th and still considered most popular president, as well as huge 30 ft marble carvings of his great speeches such as the Gettysburg Address. We then took a wander up to the Korean War memorial, maybe not all that applicable to a few Brits but the memorial was particularly moving with castings of field soldiers and a granite frieze of faces of some of the dead.

Tidal Basin – this is a segregated area of water off of the Potomac River that is partly functional and partly aesthetic. Our reason for taking the merry jaunt around it was to see the Franklin Delano Roosevelt & Thomas Jefferson memorials. FDR was the only president to serve longer than 2 terms (he actually started a fourth but died one year in) and along with his wife, Eleanor, did loads of work to turn the country round after the Great Depression. This more modern memorial featured loads of cool water features and various quotations dotted around the sprawling brickwork. The Jefferson memorial. was similar in style to the Lincoln memorial, but instead was circular & more open, with a fine bronze statue of the 3rd president who basically wrote the Declaration of Independence.

US Holocaust Museum – an intense place that, unlike other such places, didn’t concentrate solely on the subject of concentration camps, but started the story from just after WWI, so you got to understand the Nazi Party’s rise to power and then their demise rather than the usual “Hitler was a mentalist, murdered millions but then Tommy kicked his arse and it was all good”. I don’t know about Joe but Tash & I can never tire of learning more about this aspect of WWII and this museum was a truly impressive place of information & tribute.

Washington Monument – The big pointy thing that appears in EVERY picture & movie shot of DC. It’s fitting that the 1st president should be dedicated by the tallest all masonry structure in the world but a bit disappointing that there wasn’t a statue of him anywhere, except hidden in the Capitol. The trip to the top was worth it as the view out across the city in all directions was fantastic. The views up the Mall & back to the Lincoln memorial looked amazing from up so high. The obscenely strong winds outside also made the flags circled around the monument look pretty cool.

Bureau of Engraving & Printing – This is where US paper currency is printed and although it’s just a corridor of the history of US currency and then a load of dirty great big printing presses, the best bit is the cash. Literally millions of dollars are stacked there in front of you, teasingly behind Perspex. And all the people that work there seem so non-plussed by standing next to bundles of lovely greens. Just one sheet can be worth $3,200, even 3 or 4 times that to a collector if it’s uncut. “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby”.

The Mall – we took another gentle stroll along the huge, Pierre L’Enfant designed parkway that runs between Constitution Gardens and Capitol Hill, to take in some of the fine galleries and museum buildings of the Smithsonian Institute.

National Air & Space Museum – Not usually somewhere we’d spend a lot of time but there were some important things in here to see. It was like a real life gallery of the milestones of flight, including the Wright Brothers hand-made plane which they used for the first powered flight in 1903, the Spirit Of St. Louis used by Charles Lindbergh for the first solo trans Atlantic flight in 1927, the Mercury capsule that orbited the earth in 1962 and the pod form Apollo 11 that Neil Young & Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon in 1969 (or used on a studio set if you believe the conspiracy theorists!). There were also loads of bits of real rockets, space suits, missiles and some awesome photos taken from the Hubble space telescope. We had all been a bit gutted when we heard the main building of the Museum of American History was shut but glad that some of the exhibits were being temporarily housed here. From the Wizard Of Oz we saw Dorothy’s ruby slippers, the Scarecrow’s costume & a script page from when it goes B&W to colour. There was lots of old bits of Americana, Presidential personal effects, outfits, Kermit the Frog, the signpost from M*A*S*H and real Droids. Yep, actual costumes of C3-PO & R2-D2 as used in The Empire Strikes Back, I literally stood frozen to the floor with my mouth open when I saw them. (Tash had to physically move me along so the kids behind me could see!) Obviously they WERE real and just presented as costumes so that people didn’t disturb the droids while they had their primary systems shut down. One cool story I heard was when they shipped the exhibits across the mall each truck was insured for $15 million. The truck that contained the cape worn by Jackie Kennedy for JFK’s inauguration and the top hat worn by Lincoln when he was shot had only those 2 items in it! Even if some fashion nutter paid $2 million for the cape that makes a 140 year old & rather tatty beaver skin top hat worth $13 million!!!!


The US Capitol – this is the US equivalent of the House of Parliament, so this is where the Senate & House of Representatives convenes for Congress. I love this building from the outside (we saw the new & first female Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, having her photo taken at the eastern front) and it’s pretty flash on the inside. 2 amazing frescos decorate the Rotunda at the heart of the building, off of which are sprawling chambers containing offices & some amazing statues of past presidents, political figures and the most celebrated sons & daughters from each state. There was a quite ornate crypt designed to house George Washington’s coffin but never used. This was also the site where Tasha laid claim to Debbie’s “meeting someone you know from home whilst on holiday” crown by bumping into a girl she went to school with.

National Archives – This was a fairly interesting place but by this time we were on museum overload (a bit like you readers with this blog) so we skated over the history bits to head for the important stuff. For this building is home to the originals of the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Constitution (1787) and the Bill Of Rights (1789). The room in which they’re housed is under such low light & tight security that any hope of photos was out of the window, but it’s still stupendously impressive. There are several more cabinets of important documents such as the Louisiana Purchase but as a visiting Brit it was nice & patriotic to see a copy of the Magna Carta dating from 1297, which is held as a reminder of the law system upon which the US is built.

Ford Theatre – This is a quaint little theatre which was where John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln in 1865. We had a rather elaborate story given by the guide and a load of related memorabilia but not much else really.

International Spy Museum – Owing to the permanent suspension of tours around the FBI buildings since 9/11, Joe & I instead paid a visit to the Spy museum. We started off by having to learn a secret identity and then we were left to discover loads of cool exhibits about modern spy work, classic Cold War Espionage, Enigma decoding, the history of early spies in Japan & the Civil War and movie spies. Every now and then there was more information to embellish our secret identities, plus secret passages and bugs dotted around the building. When we got to the end there was a pretend security screening to see if we could convince the authorities of our secret identities – I got held until the Foreign Office could iron out some problems but I think Joe got detained in custody. Whilst we boys did spy stuff, Tash went to investigate the Old Post Office, but as this was closed she went off to investigate stuff.

So that was DC; steeped in history, totally intense and scary to think we fitted all the above into 3 days.

How did I forget?

When we were in Memphis, Tash, Joe & I all had a game of crazy golf. Not that out of the ordinary you say, well this was an 18 hole GLOW IN THE DARK course! Lots of swirly paintwork, UV lights, luminous balls and some excellent tunes played. I even let Joe beat me by a single shot.

Putting Edge

At last, an update

Despite the constant access to the net during the last 10 days we haven’t got round to doing any blogging. Sorry. As some of you may have seen I did get all our new photos up a couple of nights ago and so below are highlights of the last week and a half, split into 6 separate blogs, from the bottom up. For some reason I can’t get any pictures into the Memphis & Graceland posts, but you can see them all on flickr.

You can't give booze t' baby - or anyone else

Our final stop in Tennessee was one of the main reasons for coming to the US. Lynchburg is quite a quaint little town with a population of approx 361, set around a town square in southern Tennessee, midway between Nashville and Chattanooga. A very pretty place and a simpler way of life, sort of the American equivalent of a country village back home, but with one very important cluster of buildings – the Jack Daniel’s Distillery.

Moore County, like most of Tennessee, is dry – which basically means you can’t buy liquor there and can only consume liquor in the privacy of your own home - so this also meant no tasting. However the tour was fantastic, mainly due to our guide, David. This guy looked like Uncle Jesse from the Dukes Of Hazzard but with a proper southern accent and some of the most amazing facial expressions & articulations of what he was telling us. The distillery itself is set near a cave opening to the natural springs, from which all the water used in JD is taken, and there were even 2 JD fire engines (one of which was an REO Speedwagon, from which the band took their name) in case the charcoal burning got out of control. We got to see all stages of the process, even getting to smell the sour mash as it reacted with the yeast (Tash said she could have eaten it!) and then the smell of the pure liquor dripping through 14ft of maple charcoal. We only got a quick whiff but it was like sticking both nostrils over a bottle of JD and inhaling for an hour. There was a slow meander through the barrel house where all the oak barrels of booze are left to mature for years before bottling. It’s because of this process that JD is the only liquor worldwide that can use the title of Tennessee whiskey, of which the UK is the 2nd largest consumer. If only I’d had a horse and cart so as to pinch a couple of barrels from the corner.


BTW; Jack wasn’t actually his name, it was Jasper Newton Daniel, but I’m glad he changed it cos it would sound a bit daft asking for a Jasper & Coke. Although Jasper & ginger does have a certain ring to it, don’t you think?

On our way out of Tennessee we did venture over towards the Smoky Mountains to get a glimpse of Pigeon Forge. Another town in the sticks I hear you cry, and yes, that’s what we’d expected, but this is the birthplace of Dolly Parton. Tash will back me up and say that outside of country circles, Dolly is hugely underrated and stupidly only thought of in the UK for 9 to 5 and Jolene, but she did write & produce so many other great tunes. We genuinely had no intention of visiting Dollywood, but just wanted to have a glimpse at the gates. However the day we chose to drive through was also the start of Christmas shenanigans in Pigeon Forge, so traffic was stacked. As with Nutbush, we tried but failed.

Yee hah baby

On our way to Nashville, we went through a town called Brownsville. One of it’s suburbs, near Highway no. 19, is Nutbush, birthplace of Tina Turner. We got a bit lost though and couldn’t find it.

Anyway, Nashville was another surprise to us. We expected in your face country & western but instead got a great little city with certainly the nicest people we’ve met so far in the US. As this was the home of Country we popped down to the Country Music Hall Of Fame and got educated on a the biggest genre of music to totally zoom past the UK (we’re not including Billy Ray Cyrus or Rednex in this). There were some totally ridiculous outfits worn by these people and also some ridiculous records made by them, but nonetheless it was still a good trip. We found out where Dolly got the inspiration for “9 to 5” from (her fingernails), a cool exhibit on Ray Charles’s rather unknown country recordings and saw gold discs for every country album to win the accolade – which is hundreds, maybe thousands.


On the way back through the city we did a bit of sightseeing and window shopping, then dropped into a bar to listen to a country band. Gladly there was a proper cowboy playing & singing and even a couple who kept getting up to dance around. And none of your line dancing bobbins either. I must admit that I’m growing a fondness for slide guitars, I reckon it’d be cool to have one, but maybe after I get a theramin. Joe did venture back the next night where the same band was playing but with a terrible lady singing for them. There was also another couple dancing, but these new ones were a bit younger & lighter on their feet than the previous night’s couple (who appeared again). Maybe that particular bar had a Dancing On Sawdust style competition.

The King's house

No trip to the South is complete without a visit to Graceland. We had a lot of expectations, including a tour surrounded by obsessive fans, over the top décor, general cheese and Hound Dog played over & over again. We were pleasantly surprised however.

The actual house is nowhere near as huge as you’d expect, it’s still big, but wouldn’t look out of place in an affluent Kentish town. The upstairs of the house is closed to the public but despite the 70’s fashioned décor, the ground floor seemed so normal. The lounge, dining room and kitchen were all decorated for Christmas and led into the fabled jungle room. This was a bit of a let down as I was expecting bizarre murals of the rainforest on the walls and stuffed animals everywhere, but it was again just another normal room, with a jungle influence - green carpet (including on the ceiling!?), hardwood furniture and animal skin rugs, but nothing too over the top. The TV room in the basement was ace, all blue & yellow, corner bar and the line of 3 tv’s Elvis had installed so he could watch the 3 major networks at the same time. There was also a converted room that housed some of the Presley’s personal effect such as Elvis & Priscilla’s wedding outfits, Lisa-Marie’s cot, fur bed, jewellery, outfits & Elvis’s karate gear (I thought all the karate moves were for show but he was a proper black belt).

There was a massive gallery dedicated purely to Elvis’s awards, it was massive. He had so many gold & platinum discs, Grammys for his gospel recordings and various awards. What we didn’t realise was that these were just his domestic awards. As we moved on to his racquetball court, the signs said it had been converted for his international awards. There were just as many of these as his domestic discs and also some of the classic Vegas outfits.

There were loads more exhibits including some of his early Sun-era outfits, army uniforms, film costumes, everyday gear, formal wear and more Vegas clobber. A huge area was devoted to his car and boy-toy collection (he enjoyed racing modified golf carts & custom trikes around the grounds of Graceland) and we also got to see his two private jets.

As Tash will testify, whether you like Elvis or not, this is one of the best days out the US has to offer.

Walkin' in Mamephis

Next stop was Memphis, named after the original Egyptian capital (which we’ve also been to). To be honest, Memphis was a bit grubby and the first city we’d really experienced any pan-handling. Added to the fact that we had to walk 2 miles to the closest launderette, then back again, all took our moods down a bit. However the reason to come to Memphis is for the music. I can’t think of any place on earth where so many different kinds of music have been born or refined.

Unfortunately we were a day too late to find the church where Reverend Green would be glad to see us, so first stop was the Sun Studios on Union Avenue. The birthplace of Rock ‘n’ Roll and launchpad of the careers of Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis and many others, it was actually a lot smaller than I imagined. Yet still cool to think that without the foresight of owner Sam Phillips, modern music now would sound totally different. One cool story we heard was about a recording session with Carl Perkins & Jerry Lee Lewis. Halfway through Elvis dropped in to say hello, they called up Johnny Cash and then the four of them jammed away. This then became the Million Dollar Quartet recordings.

We then took in a couple more music venues, starting with the Rock 'n' Soul Museum, which took us through the history of Memphis being the country/gospel/blues melting pot that gave us rock ‘n’ roll, soul and rhythm ‘n’ blues. Some of the items on display were amazing, including an Ike Turner acetate that was over 55 years old! Then we journeyed into a local neighbourhood to the old Stax studios, to listen to more about this illustrious label. Stax was a far rawer version of soul, when compared to the polished sounds of Motown, but some of the recordings by Isaac Hayes, Rufus Thomas and Booker T & the MGs are awesome. Equally impressive were some of Isaac Hayes’s ridiculous stage outfits – most of which consisted of a cape, stacked heels and a codpiece.

We also took a stroll along Beale Street (unfortunately our feet weren’t “10ft off of Beale” which is still the social hub of Memphis and dropped into a blues bar for some authentic catfish and creole BBQ dinners. I didn’t drag Tash or Joe around the Gibson factory, and it might have even been too much for me as I’m just an appreciator of guitars rather than a player, however the instrument shop of the factory was too cool for words. Rob & Stephen take note - they even had a Jimmy Page style two necked SG!

Then it was time for a bit of social history, so we headed for the Lorraine Motel. Not that well known back in Blighty but this was the site of the shooting of Dr. Martin Luther King Jnr. The National Civil Rights Museum was a whole lot more than this and made you realise how long the fight for equality has lasted. Plus there was a whole exhibit dedicated to the conspiracy theories surrounding the FBI being behind MLK’s assassination.

One of the major suburbs of Memphis is a little place called Bartlett, they even have their own bank – but I didn’t think they’d give me a few spare thousand just for having the same name.

For those of you wondering why there is a picture of a sandwich on our flickr, this was from the first night we arrived. We found a small convenience store and grabbed some snacks, whilst Joe got a sandwich. The guy behind the deli asked several questions regarding what Joe wanted and spent several minutes preparing this snack. When Joe opened it up however, the guy had simply put 2 pieces of bread, a few slices of turkey and a sachet of mayo into a bag, rather than actually making the bloody thing.

...It goes to St. Louis...

Some of you may have heard a little ditty about a road called “Route 66” – Tash has never heard this song. Well, for those not in the know it trails across the country from Chicago to LA, the first section of which goes south to St. Louis. So after a brief stretch of interstate for me to get used to the roads, we followed the old Route 66 most of the way to St. Louis. This was actually quite cool cos it gave us the chance to see some of those American towns that you see in movies but don’t think actually exist in real life.

As we drove over the Mississippi the sun was setting behind the famous Arch and although it was getting late, we still had time to go to the St. Louis City Museum. But this is no ordinary museum, everything in it is reclaimed from the city and is an entirely visual & hands on place – imagine a museum with no boards to read and instead is a giant playground for all sizes of kids from 5 – 35. Tash seemed a bit bored (or maybe just typically aloof & British) with all the tunnels and climbing but when it got to the slides she soon got into it. She even displayed a rye smile when we saw the world's biggest pair of pants. We stayed for ages here, looking at the reconstructed facades inside and playing on the walkways outside, before crashing out back at the hotel.


Next morning we didn’t need an alarm as we were woken by a lot of rowdiness coming from the carpark outside our hotel. This was the St. Louis Rams fans taking part in the great American tradition of football BBQ. No matter what time kick-off is for your team, it seems that all the fans gather near the ground very early to drink, eat and talk football. Annoying for us as we were all tired but cool to see that these fans really enjoy the whole celebration of the team type thing – can’t imagine this happening down the Strand before a Gills game.

The Windy City

Chicago greeted us with the rather grand looking Union Station and a chilly bite to the air. A quick taxi ride with a war veteran who was bemoaning Dubya’s antics took us to our hotel and hooking up with Joe. Unfortunately his immense enthusiasm & giddiness was unfairly matched against our knackeredness.

Chicago was actually a pretty cool place, the architecture there was amazing and the skyscrapers were astonishing. Maybe it’s because downtown is quite compact, but all the buildings seemed to be huge, towering above everyone below. Allegedly, 3 of the world’s 5 tallest buildings are in Chicago (Sear’s Tower, Aon Centre & J Hancock Centre) after Taipei 1 & the Petronas Towers, but there are loads of stupid rules regarding tall structures. Anyway, from the ground, Sears is unbelievable. We took a journey up Sears Tower in some kind of bullet lift. The view was fantastic, the suburbs seemed to stretch for miles, cloaked on the east by Lake Michigan and we could make out Soldier Field & Wrigley Field. We also had several walks along Michigan Avenue were some of the cool buildings such as the Wrigley Building & Chicago Tribune Towers were. Also along this street was the amazing Mirror Bean in Millennium Park. Although this was just a massive bean shaped thing made of a super shiny metal so you could see the Chicago skyline (and yourself) reflected in it, but it does give some very cool photos.


Another highlight was The Loop. This is just part of the city’s train system that loops around downtown, but it was a great ride and nice to have travelled on the same route that Spidey had to save from Doc Oc in Spiderman 2. We also had some very excellent pizza at Chicago’s best pizza restaurant, only I can’t remember the name of it. It was good though.

Talking of food, we all got to experience our first Thanksgiving festivities. The morning was spent watching the Thanksgiving Day parade – lots of floats, inflatables and marching bands. Due to the train bridges, there was a small alleyway used to deflate the balloons in, when the Big Blue Bear inflated was taken down some little kids started crying cos they thought he was dying. After the parade we headed to a restaurant for some traditional Thanksgiving dinner, which is basically just Christmas dinner, but about 8 weeks early and with candied yams. But it was a damn fine dinner and a good excuse for a roast. Although we didn’t have any, there were some restaurants serving Turducken, which is a turkey stuffed with a duck, which in turn is stuffed with a chicken, and then the usual trimmings. Next day we got to enjoy a German style Christmas village that had been recreated in the city centre and then the tree lighting ceremony.

Last thing to do in Chicago was pick up the car. I was kacking it about driving on the other side of the road and not having any gears to control, but it was necessary for our road trip south...

Fly away on my Zephyr

We Brits often think that travelling our great land can be a big hassle. Balls it does! You can drive from one end of England to the other, and then back again in a day (you’d be a bit knackered but you could do it). Over here you can’t, so we took a train from SF to Chicago – the California Zephyr. The 2000 mile journey across 7 states was due to take just over 2 days, although various delays meant it lasted about 60 hours. The journey was very cool though, we got to see some amazing scenery through Nevada, Utah & Colorado, including the Sierra Nevadas, Rocky Mountains & Colorado River. Our crazy waiter, Red, in the dining car insisted on serenading us with the same song, something to do with “baby don’t cry, love is here”. We had a cosy little room in the sleeper carriage and playing cards whilst the mid-west ranges drifted by actually made time fly.


We only got a handful of photos but check out this ghosty pic from Reno train station.

We didn't actually go to any kind of disco, but...

After the hecticness of Vegas it was back to Hayward for a bit of wind down time and sleep, so much so that Jamie and I didn’t even get up to listen to the Gills. Saturday was spent preparing for J&L’s dinner party that evening, prompting expectations of a Hyacinth style “Candlelight Supper”. Jamie slaved away for several hours in the kitchen but the resulting Coq-Au-Vin was pretty damn good. There was also some excellent cheese dip in a bread bowl thing, peanut butter mousse cake and brownies for pudding. It was also nice to see some of Lilly’s friends again & for Tash to meet them, and a good evening was had by one and all. After this, our time in Hayward was drawing to a close, so we must say a huge thank you to Jamie & Lilly for letting us stay with them for so long, we really enjoyed ourselves. Thank you for introducing us to the delights of Carl's Jnr and sorry for all my ridiculous sneezing & hammering of your tea-bag stash.

Next we moved on to San Francisco city centre and also to our first hostel experience for this trip. Luckily, we had a private room in an annex building so at least we got a bit of privacy and a nice view of the Trans America Pyramid. Despite being in a part of town full of strip joints the neighbourhood was pretty fun, close to Chinatown (which didn’t smell half as bad as Hong Kong) and certainly nothing like The Cross back in Sydney. The only downside was it was pretty noisy and so neither of us have slept much in the last week.

To compound our sleep deprivation, the next day we were up at 5 to go on a day trip to Yosemite. As it’s been a while since we’ve banged on about scenery and how it can’t get any better, I can say this – Yosemite National Park in the “fall” is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I don’t want to detract from everything else we’ve seen, especially all the wonders of New Zealand, but Yosemite was stunning. It was amazing to see these glacial valleys and broken hunks of mountain covered in autumnal colours, dotted with evergreens and a slight dusting of snow. There were some pretty cool waterfalls that had just started picking up the first drops of melting snow, a few coyotes, bears & deer and the beautiful sound of tiny streams trickling in the distance. Unfortunately there were no miniature cowboys with orange moustaches jumping around angrily & shooting guns.


As I’ve been to San Francisco before I guess Tash should really be giving you her views, but as Tash is working hard on her college project it’s li’l ol’ me a hoggin’ the bloggin’. It’s hard to describe the feel of SF as it’s such a laid back city, which was difficult to experience as we rushed about for 3 days cramming in as much as possible.

Market area – we did the usual tourist thing of going round the shops for a bit, although I couldn’t find where the “Aaron Leevert” suit shop was.
Cable Cars – we had a few rides on the historic cable cars that run from Market to the Wharf. This is one of the best bits of SF cos you can sit inside or outside or even hang on the side whilst cruising up & down those huge hills just taking in the scenery. One trip we were serenaded by a crazy French lady who’d given herself a crew cut and kept shouting about how much she hated California, before bursting into song again!
Fisherman’s Wharf – we ate some good soup & chilli in bread bowls at Boudin’s Sour Dough bakery, saw the sea lions at Pier 39, took in the street entertainers, including one guy dressed as a bush that was jumping out at ladies. I also showed Tash the hostel we’d stayed in before J&L’s wedding. Tash also got her first proper view of Golden Gate Bridge.


Alcatraz – the old prison island amazed both for the first & second time and once again made me want to watch The Shawshank Redemption. It’s such a dark & moody place, the bleakness of the exercise yard coupled with the frustrating view of the SF skyline gets you every time.
Golden Gate Park – too big to see in one day, so we just took a bus up through the city to take in the cool, Victorian houses everywhere (included the one used in Mrs, Doubtfire) and then had a walk around Stow Lake in the park’s middle.
Haight Ashbury – one of those places you go to say you’ve seen it. It was a lot grubbier than I remembered and reminded Tash of a shabby version of Brighton. There's still a great vibe to the area, especially when you think of its importance to music in the late 60’s. Which leads on to one of my favourite places – Amoeba, the coolest record shop I’ve ever been to (seeing as the Vinyl Experience off Tottenham Court Road is no more). Yes, I did buy but time & cash restraints limited this to only 2 cds. Seriously, that’s like putting me in a room with a crate of PG Tips but only enough hot water for one cuppa.
Mission – Another cool neighbourhood with loads going on and home to a handful of thrift stores. Pickings were slim and Stu found the only real footy shirt of the day. However we had good burritos & tamales for lunch.

Just before we left and just after Jane & Stu arrived, J&L took us to a wicked Italian restaurant. Much food & Chianti was consumed by all and I think we took more photos of the food than of each other.

As MC Hammer once said, “I’ve been around the world, from London to the Bay”, well that’s you and us now preacher man.