Baghdad By The Bay

San Francisco

I was hoping for great things from San Francisco after hearing so much, and first impressions? Feels like London, smells like Amsterdam. Or at least the commercial bits do anyway. When you get out to the piers, London doesn't have quite so many sea-lions. And speaking of sea-lions, we can briefly bring back the wildlife list which has taken a bit of a break since New York or somewhere as all the wildlife has been the same. But now, much further south and on the Pacific Ocean, we can add sea-lions (have I mentioned that I've seen some sea-lions?) and also some pelicans (bit more of a natural setting than the ones in London). I saw some bison too, but they weren't wild.

Pacific Ocean

For a city that I don't think is very photogenic, somehow I managed to take over 125 pictures which is a lot for me. I went on a walking tour with Wild Wes, went round the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), but I spent most my time walking around the shoreline or Golden Gate Park as they are massive. Quickly back to SFMOMA and my comparisons of art museums that seems to have become a substantial part of this trip. The Columbus Museum of Art is still easily the best I've seen. SFMOMA like so many other places has an amazing building, a fairly large collection, but being modern art so much of it goes straight over my head and nothing really stood out as being exceptional. I did however manage to complete a game where you have to find clues hidden in pieces of art and then decode the message to find some result. The result in this case was a phone number and with such a crappy phone I didn't find out what that was about. But with a different result, it could be a really good activity to make people more involved in such obscure art.

Some quality scenery to be seen walking around underneath the Golden Gate Bridge and then following the headland for my first proper view of the Pacific Ocean. One hell of a long walk though. There's also a hill on Moraga Street which is less well known than the Twin Peaks, but still some stunning views across the entire city, and when I was up there really shows the strange weather systems that the city can experience.

Looking over San Francisco, Golden Gate Bridge is hidden in the clouds somewhere

Top of hill on Moraga St.

Back on the bus for a relatively short overnight trip down to San Diego. No crazies. No overwhelming smells. Just an absolutely rammed bus. And with it being an Express coach (kind of like 1st class for Greyhound) I thought I'd be able to get some decent sleep. But with the guy next to us encroaching on my seat space (think of when you share a bed with someone, the girl always takes the middle half) and some strange seat design that makes it impossible to rest your head without straining your neck, I got pretty much no sleep. The lack of suspension and the prevalence of bumps and potholes didn't help either. Neither did the condescending driver turning on the lights at half 1 in the morning to wake everyone up for the stop at Burger King.

Golden Gate Bridge

Being driven down the West coast, I've seen a number of places that I would have stayed at had the cycling continued, and from the "comfort" of the bus those places are horrible. Having seen that, and not having a mission to distract me, I really want to come home now. I don't really want to deal with motels, hostels or couches. Once you've seen a place and taken some photos, with nobody to share it with it quickly becomes mundane and the whole experience becomes even more lonely. Hopefully I can see some familiar faces soon and in just over 3 weeks I'll be home again. Cannot wait!

Finally, for anyone adventurous enough to have a Google account and venture into Google+, I've posted a load more photos on there, up to and including San Francisco photos. Link on the right takes you to my profile, and then you should be able to get to my photos from there.