San Francisco

Ok the world tour begins!

Manila

In what seemed like 5 minutes we left Manila.

We moved everything out of the house including Philip.

We  said goodbye to our favourite waitress in the local Indian restaurant.

I got my ear pierced in a Thai restaurant late at night.

John Wilson helped out too.

We had a party.

We went to the Sofitel for Sunday brunch and got wasted.

We went to the bank to get some spending money.

We had our last beer in Cerverceria.

Got written up in the paper.

And we moved into the Australian Embassy for a couple of days.

Phew, that all went very fast.

We weren’t the only people staying at the Embassy though. This bloke thought he looked good in white until I told him he was mainly beige. He won’t be taking me on in the Persil challenge again.

We had a last lunch with the usual suspects.

Then we won a game of bridge and headed to the airport in a bulletproof car (Thanks to Chris and Bill for putting us up!).

Tub (or Julie as her birth certificate refers to her) was determined that we would be upgrading to business class for the 12 hour trip to San Francisco. I was looking forward to being the only homeless, unemployed people sitting at the front of the plane but it turned out that they wanted money for the upgrade so we couldn’t do it.

Instead we sat at the back in the middle of the toilet queue. However the food was good.

Then after 1.5 hours watching a 5 minute looped video of how nice it was to go through customs in America, we finally cleared the airport and headed for San Fran.

We got in about 10pm and SF is a pretty lively city at night. We are staying in the Hilton which was supposed to be a posh start to the trip but I haven’t seen so many whores, crack addicts and mentally ill people since the last family Christmas dinner.

Tomorrow we explore the city!

Day 2 – Friday

No jet lag and the day started well with Tub telling me that she had never had sex in California and wanted to do something about it. This gave me a great opportunity to explore San Francisco on my own for a few hours.

I have heard that the west coast is quite liberal but I was surprised to see that they not only tolerate pedophiles, they actually have a club to help them to meet kids.

Just along the road from this poster was a trailer full of skateboards that they use to catch the kids.

You Say Tomarto and I Say Tomayto

Well at breakfast Tub discovered that if you say tomarto then you don’t get anything to eat, just funny looks from the waitress who thinks you are French. Luckily I stepped in with my best ‘Merican accent and saved the day.

After breakfast we went for a walk to explore the city. The crack heads had all gone home with the whores to escape the dangers of daylight so the city was just left with nutters and poor people. The poverty is very confronting in San Francisco, there are lots of people who are clearly living on loose change on the streets and have ragged clothes and obvious untreated injuries. If it was one or two you could help but there are so many. Most of the poor sit on the floor looking up the skirts of tall girls but the other group, the crazies, move all over the place. Today I saw an old guy in a suit with a ponytail riding a bike and talking on the phone, a guy cycling up a hill drinking a coffee and a woman skipping around in public like a horse. No really, a horse.

We took a boat trip around the bay with several thousand Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese tourists. I thought we were in for a very noisy trip but the tour guide took great pride in pointing out the navy base and which countries they had visited over the years which seemed to quieten everyone down a bit. Know your audience, they pay your tips!

San Francisco has a bridge like the Sydney Harbour Bridge, only shitter.

In fact they have two of them and the second one is twice as big, but this one is older and nobody gives a fuck about doing something that has already been done.

I don’t know about Escape from Alcatraz, but there is a month long waiting list to get on a tour so we had to make do with looking at it from the boat. Probably just as well as it looks like a bunch of old rubble.

Apparently in the 60’s some native Americans took it over (or Indians as the tour guide described them, confusing the hell out of the Asian tourists on the boat for the second time). The tour guide was delighted to tell us that eventually the government managed to drive them out. Presumably they fell for the old smallpox blanket trick a second time. Although the tour guide sounds like a racist redneck, he was in fact a tape recording. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.

After lunch we headed back to the hotel to get to safety before the crack dealers and pimps all wake up. Tub spotted a short cut on the map but it turns out they like a hill in San Fran but don’t tell you that on the map.

I was very proud, she only sat down twice.

Inspired by hearing about lots of explorers today, I have started to map the city out for any other visitors who follow after me.

Time for a beer!

Day 3

The battle against jet lag is going better than expected. I fell asleep face first into a lasagne in a diner (an American word for where cockroaches go to hang out) about 8pm which I consider a reasonable result.

This morning I am as fresh as an old daisy.

The name San Francisco comes from Spanish. San means every, Fran means 50 years and Cisco is the Spanish word for fucking huge earthquake. Like a kid building a sandcastle on the beach, every 50 to 100 years the tide comes in and destroys the whole city. They rebuild it from scratch safe in the knowledge that now is the least likely time for an earthquake. When I learnt this I was at sea on a boat, now that I am back on land and on the 23rd floor of a really old building, I am less enthusiastic about it.

Today is Saturday and we went to play bridge out in the burbs taking the train to get there. Since most of the day was spent sitting in dark room playing cards with strangers, there isn’t much to report (other than I suck at bridge).

Apple Maps got the location wrong. This is not the game you are looking for.

Finally we got to the Mason’s to play bridge 4,000 years in the future. Wait, what?

We have decided to rate all of the cities that we visit and create the Guthrie Index of World Cities. So far San Francisco is doing quite well. The architecture is nice, it’s quite diverse and the food is reasonable. The weather has also been quite nice, and warmer than we expected. The only downside with the weather is that everyone we meet whinges like a pom who just lost the cricket about how it is too hot. Having walked for 45 minutes from the train to the bridge club (the first 10 in the wrong direction), it is a bit rich for someone who just got out of an air conditioned car and walked 2 metres to an air conditioned building to be complaining about the weather.

The jet lag got the better of us in the afternoon but we woke up to a nice sunset. Yup, when you wake up to watch a sunset you are either jet lagged, going to work and wishing you had studied harder at school or a vampire.

Here is an updated map with today’s exploring included.

I hope the earthquake holds off for a couple more days.

Day 4

The jet lag is definitely winning at the moment. But on the bright side its not every day that you can get out of bed at 8:30am and you’ve already watched 4 hours of Law and Order.

We made the mistake of going back to the breakfast place we went to on the first day. This time it was crap. I think it is because we don’t speak the language here. Tub asked for “Tomaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyto on toast” (well done Tub) and I remembered my first day when I asked for “fried eggs picked up with that fish flip thing and dropped back in the oil the other way up for a bit until they are cooked”. Apparently that is too long to write down so she just said “Over easy.” Since we seem to be in the whore capital of the galaxy I thought she was making some nasty comment about me but the same thing happened the next day. Today I asked for eggs over easy but they brought me some half cooked crap. This language is harder than you would think. I’ll go back to my way of describing it. Maybe the term I need to use is “Over easy, and don’t forget to cook the fucking thing.”

I have found out that Americans use measurement systems from the Middle Ages. Fluid Ounces. Feet and Inches. Pounds and Fahrenheit. I can’t even spell Fahrenheit. Apparently they don’t use all of it though. We took some luggage to FedEx to get it sent to Washington for the cold part of the trip and when I told the guy in FedEx that my luggage weighed 4 stone and I had dragged it for 6 furlongs he had no idea what I meant. I used another Middle Ages word and called him a berk, which isn’t as nice a term as it sounds.

We took a bus tour around the city today. The first thing we saw was something we had been warned about in the US. They call it “car jacking” and I was warned that this is mainly done by “African Americans”. Well I’m frankly not surprised having watched this group of “European Americans” trying to do it.

I thought I wasn’t really being fair to the Golden Gate Bridge by calling it shitty so we went to have a close up look at it. When we got there they had hidden it in shame. I don’t blame them.

I put this picture together and sent it to the San Francisco Tourist Board’s Suggestions and Feedback email address.

If you look closely enough you can see the joins where I photoshopped in a proper bridge but nothing that a bit of fog couldn’t hide.

We went for lunch at a Persian Restaurant. Talk about hiding in plain view! Get a map America. You could drone the crap out of this place without getting out of bed and God knows after the lunch we had they would deserve it. Actually you already drone most of the world without getting out of bed so I guess you know what you are doing.

We passed a lot of buildings on the bus tour but this one in particular interested me. This is where Whoopi Goldberg performed her most famous role as Guinan in Star Trek the Next Generation.

This is our last day in San Francisco, tomorrow we head to Vegas, or Loss Vegas to give it its full name.

Thanks San Fran! We had fun!