Day Three
03 Sep 2005
Ed (Co-worker also in the USA) and I agreed to meet up, so I was goign to drive down to get him, and then drive back up to the City.
For those keeping score, I am in Milpitas and he is in San Rafael.
Food!
Yep, my whole life is food, and toys. Today's breakfast is some kind of scone with egg, bacon and cheese. From Macdonalds. I'm international to the core, as long as it's easy.
And yes, it REALLY is a scone-dough bun thing. They call it a "bacon & egg breakfast biscuit". I call it "almost too salty".
Money!
I got my first dollar in change. I dont know why, but spending money via credit card and carrying around $20's and $50's wasn't half as exciting as getting a dollar.
You'll note (ha!) that it's got that creepy illuminati thing going on. I love it. fnord!
Driving
When the cast and crew of Dave are in San Jose, we chooes to drive Hertz. A 2005 Taurus, in fact. It's not nearly as shoddy as I imagined a Taurus to be.
Learning to reverse every single instinct I had to look left was pretty easy - I just look both ways for everything. This was my first decent length drive, and I felt quite good at the end of it.
Daft punk came on the radio, and I couldnt handle my joy at driving along at elevnty million mile an hour, while head-bobbing to Da Funk. So I took my own photo, just to increase the lamo factor a little.
The hill wasnt really that steep, either.
It looked like this for half an hour..
The scenery was pretty much concrete...
AND THEN I SAW AN IPOD ADVERT!
The bridge I went over was the Oakland Bridge, and it's an incredible thing to cross. Coming from a country where we dont really have gigantic concrete behemoths, this felt amazing. All those games like ZeroG which have twisty, narrow freeform bridges? They arent fiction as first thought!
Those struts go on for a minute or two of driving.. and it's just amazing.
The good thing about such a bridge is you get to take happy-snaps of the other side..
Golden Gate Bridge
So having collected Ed, we set off for the Big SF Central
Of course, no trip to the city could be complete without going through the Golden Gate Bridge..
The mist is incredible .. It basically just floats around the bridge.
The bridge itself is just wonderful - I had no idea it was such an Art Deco monument. There's little flanges and details everywhere, really changing the feel of the structure. It's incredibly dated, but in a way which makes it all the more endearing.
San Francisco
We finally found the city!
There's Ed! The guy on the left, with the funky shoes.
This is the main square .. we arrived as people were selling art. And another iPod advert!I love them! Colors!
Tourist Action!
We got down an touristy at Pier 39. It was kinda daggy, but in the US it's hard to tell a tourist trap from a corprotist utopia.. so I decided to enjoy it anyway
People everywhere! My favourite!
After days of pleading from my mum, I had located a donut shop!
They sure were mini - minitastic!
The Pier
So most of the pier is shops. Because obviously we dont have enough of those on dry land, right? But the fun bits are the observation areas.. You can observe:
Alcatraz!
A boat and birds! (seasonally unavailable)
Sea Lions!
More Sea Lions!
Food Redux!
Ed and I were peckish after all that looking at things, so we headed back for food.
These guys didnt have crabby patties on the menu, unfortunetly.
We ended up eating at the Crab House from memory, but I didnt take a picture!
There was a fifteen minute wait for the table, so we wandered around. Then we found ..
Wetzel's Pretzels!
So we got one each to get through that difficult waiting period.
Ed is more of a classic pretzel guy ..
Whereas if you give me the option to add pepperoni to anything, I'm gonna take you up on that.