Mar 2007

So we hired a car in San Fran and decided to take three days to drive down highway 1 along the coast to LA. The trip didn't start off on the best note with us driving over Leon's backpack and killing his camera and sunglasses (oops!). We then decided to name our car 'Stampy' in memory of this event. The views along the coast were really beautiful

We stayed in a dodgy motel in Carmel on the first night then the next day we drove to Hearst Castle and did a tour there. The house was unbelievable (the house behind us is only the biggest guest house, not the actual castle which was insanely huge)

We then broke all speed limits to get to Santa Barbara by night. We had a great night out with the youth hostel we stayed in getting us two for one drinks at a local bar. The drink you see below is named 'the party bucket' and it certainly started the party, and also ended the party for leon and charlie who stumbled home later that night.

Today Charlie and Leon visited the Vivienne Westwood exhibit at the local museum and toured through the Golden Gate Bridge Park.

Later we all headed out to the windy road, which is a very windy road indeed. The thing that will stick in our mind is the steep hills leading up and down the street, which is prob why they built such a silly road in the first place

We've hired a car to drive down Highway 1 to LA. Leon has bravely volunteered to drive us out of the city onto the highway, where we will be driving right on the edge of cliffs. We'd better make sure we drive on the right side of the road!

Today we were very spoilt and were taken to the Nappa Valley by Lisa (charlies family friend) and her boyfriend John. John is a wine distributor and is very familiar with nappa so he organised a vip tour of one of the Tattinger winery which is a french company.

We then got taken to a very very nice restaurant for lunch and went to a few more wineries before heading home after a long and filling day!

Today we hit castro street which is the big gay district of San Francisco. Leon went shopping there during the day to check it out for us:

Then we all went out drinking there during the night. it was by far the best night we've had out in San Fran. We had a ball and got lots of attention for being Austrlians. Charlie and Woods were one of the few girls in most of the bars but this resulted in several free drinks for them so it all ended up well. Below is a picture of one of the many people we met that night.

today we took the ferrie to alcatraz we did a walking tour then saw inside the cells, it was good but long and cold, leon complained so we put him in solitary confinement and turned him on his side

after we got back from alcatraz we took a walk through pier 39, pretty cheesy touristy stuff but we tasted our first american pretzel, it was pretty much like bread but sweet