On the Road Again

Hey all, sry for falling behind on our posts but life has been hectic. The following looks to be a rather beastly post as it is a recap of the last 4 days or so...

First off a few shout outs to some amazing people we have met along the way:

Thank you for the great service from Rosie at Pete's D restaurant in San Francisco, where we got a delicious "breakfast" burger, as well as Peter the very accommodating cheff at Pete's

We'd also like to mention Andrea and Allie, who we met while dinning at a Cafe in Elk, a small 250 person town going up the 101 on the coast of California

Lastly, but by no means least, we'd like to give a big friendly shout to Nate our waiter at the Lost Beach Cafe and wonderful establishment that had a lot of character and some delicious food.

Now to get to the meat of our adventures

The road from L.A. to San Francisco was beautiful and we took a couple of quick stops for some amazing photo ops, including some moon shadow pictures, these and many more beautiful sceneries will be uploaded soon.

The night that we arrived in San Fransisco we discovered that parking throughout the city was very expensive, so we decided to get a second room the next day that would have cheaper parking (and that we could split with Yvonne and Robyn). Fletcher and Adrian split off to do that, and Alexandros, Hofmann, Julia, and Simmons had their own adventures. They explored the farmer's market and old ferry building. They also saw the aquarium (pretty fish and jellyfish!) where Alexandros and Hofmann got to touch stingrays and sharks. They then went to Pier 39 to explore the shops around there a little bit.

That night we went out to check out the club scene in San Fran, sadly the club we wanted to go to refused to admit us with foreighn ID :'(... but we ended up goign to a wonderful place called Ko-Ko's Cocktails... The bartnder there defiatly knew how to mix. The gin mix he made me was a artistic. I highly recomend it for a chill night with a more local crowd.

The next morning I suffered a quite rude awakening at the hand of our Director. After which I was dragged out of bed at an unreasonably early hour. This breach of my beauty sleep, was, however, compensated with a delicious ham and feta crepes on pier 39.

We then visited the old Arcade on the pier. It was a trip through time, with many old arcade macxhines and most games goign for 25 cents. There was even a large mechanical diorahma of a carnival.

We were slightly creeped out by the overy smilling painted faces but it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

There were also two WWII era naval ships at the pier set up as museum exhibits. One was the USS Jeramiah O'Brien, a ship in the Merchand Navy. We got to see it's giant engines, which can take up to 1900 gallons of fuel, and many of it's quite large guns. The Director and Alex M. spent some time aiming it at Alcatraz. The museum on board the ship contained a very large and detailed diorama of D-Day. The other was a submarine whose name temporarily escapes me unfourtuantly

We were informed by a tour guide on it that it was in running condition, except that it needed some new batteries (and sometihng tells me runing to the corner store for some duracells just won;t cut it) and that it's propeller wascurrently on exhibit in Honolulou.

We also paid a brief visit to Ghirardelli Square. For those of you, like me, who are not in the know on the magical world of chocolate, Ghirardelli is one of the big names in the "biz". The square was nice but the factory that we had gone to see had unfourtunatly moved to San Leonardo... still it was very pretty.

Later in the Evening, armed with our passports (which we were told would gain us entry to clubs in San Fran) we tried to hit the city again. We went to two diffrent bars. The first wa a nice small place called the Minx, where we met a canadian bartender. Upon hearing my drink order she informed me that I was no longer in Canada... apparently bars int he states don't carry bar lime or smirnoff ice...

We left the Minx in search of a more dancey atmosphere and after several missed attempt with long lineups we ended up at a club called Swig. It was a nice place with a greart atmosphere and a good DJ. Unfourtunatly, to everyone's surprise, they did not carry Jagermeister or Rye... We made due with substitutes, but they unexpectadly called last call at 1:15, then closed the club and sent everyone home at 1:30... a ridiculously early time by our standards... and by the bartender's as well, who looked astonished at this turn of events as the club was full and people were lined up at the bar buying drinks.

The next morning we crossed the iconic Golden Gate bridge and made our way further up the coast. We broke up into three gourps. The A-Team (or the three Alexs) took one car at a faster pace so as to make it to Seattle in 2 days... sadly they have a plane to catch. Myself Julia and Fletcher took a slightly slower pace aiming to get there in 3 dsays, and Yvonne and Robyn took an even slower pace allowing themselves 4 days up the coast.

We drove to Eureka, Ca on the first day and spent the night there. Along the route we stopped at an Oyster bar just outside of San Francisco and had some delicious BBQ oysters, as well as some other scenic points. We have many pictures and you cna be assured they will be uploaded post haste.

It was later on this drive that we mte the previously mentione Andrea and Allie and had a delicious meal.

Today we are setting off for Portland, Oregon... an ambitious drive but with three drivers and alot of pretty redwoods we are excted about it.

Atractions comming up:

Redwood national Park (including us driving through a redwood!!!)
Scenic Drive offs (picked out by Julia from her guidebook)

and many more zany times