San Francisco

Aloha! I have finally started my travels. Currently I am writing this from a beautiful hotel room in sunny Sydney, but I will get to that later. First: I stopped in San Francisco, and that certainly deserves its own entry.

We stayed in a supersweet hotel room named after ancient greek adventurers and the whole thing was ship-themed. Very appropriate considering it was right on the bay in Fisherman's Wharf.

The view was lovely, too. That, there? That's Alcatraz.

We ate room service and then Rookie and Caitlin came up to see me! How did I manage not to get a picture of/with them?! Tragedy. Anyway, it was really exciting and wonderful to see them. They showed me where the sea lions used to hang out (most of them disappeared, but there were a few! Unfortunately the pictures were really blurry). We wandered all over the city, basically. Through the Italian area and into Chinatown (which I mostly wanted to see because of reading Amy Tan over the summer). We ate at a touristy place, which is a little bit too bad in a place like Chinatown but it was very yummy. Green tea icecream is delicious, who woulda thought? I did, however, get the most disconcerting fortune cookie I think I've ever gotten. "Someone is looking up to you. Don't let that person down." Scary, pressurey fortune cookie. Who looks up to me, anyway?

But anyway. After dinner we went looking for some of the more authentic sort of parts of Chinatown, but most things were closed. It was okay, though, because as we were walking down a dark street with all the shop fronts closed violin music drifted down from an upstairs window, even though they were all dark. It was sort of eerie, but very beautiful. I wish I could have captured it. Instead, I took this picture:

Then we wandered down Jack Kerouac Street (which made me smile) into the more beatnik-y area. There was a fantastic bookstore that I could have spent hours in (we spent a long time there as it was) but I decided I didn't have money or space for more books. We walked and walked and it started to rain and by the end we were all quite wet and cold and my feet hurt but it was totally worth it. I am SO glad I got to spend my last full day in the country with friends, especially friends I hadn't seen in so long with lots of advice about going abroad.

The next day my plane didn't leave until 10:40 pm so my mom and I spent the day touring San Francisco. We rode a double-decker tour bus for most of it. We sat on top even though it was chilly and very windy (but, not nearly as cold as it would have been at home) because we could see much better and get better pictures. We went through Haight-Ashbury, of course,

and saw the Painted Ladies,

(I am a sucker for Victorian architecture), and lots of other stuff that will probably be on Facebook (I took roughly 18935972398 pictures, like I do).

Oh yes, and of course we went to The Mother Ship:

Where they make everything that is delicious. (Although I maintain that if you call something "The Chocolate Building" it should be made out of chocolate. Just saying).

We walked. A lot. To make sure that we were tired and would not die on the 15(ish) hour flight. And then we hung out at the airport for ages. But at least I got to have a drink at the airport bar. We talked to a very nice Australian man who was a teacher, escorting about 40 Australian teenagers who had been in the states for 3 weeks and were going to be on our flight home. 1) Why didn't we get to go to other continents for weeks at a time in highschool? 2) Australian teenagers are just as annoying as American teenagers, but with more endearing accents. Luckily none of them were sitting close to us on the flight.

Thus endeth Karis' adventures in San Francisco, and my last day in the United States. More pictures will probably show up on Facebook. Sorry my blog is superlong. I have a feeling Australia: Day 1! Will not be better, but we'll see, I suppose.