An odd thing to get excited about much less blog but I managed to sleep the whole night without needing the loo, this is huge when you’re sleeping in a tent and in order to go to the bathroom you have to find your shoes, the torch, wiggle your way out of the sleeping bag, unzip the tent and not fall flat on your face in the process.
Had to bribe the kids with promises of hot chocolate to get them out of bed which I have to say wasn’t greeted with a whole heap of enthusiasm, they’re really not morning people. It’s taken a couple of days but the jet lag seems to have gone now I don’t feel like I’m in a walking dream state, thank goodness.
(Oh as an aside for any Red Bull addicts out there this is the place to be)
Do you see that big one?
First stop Monterey Bay Aquarium, it’s bigger than ours but on the whole we can hold our heads high. They do have a stunning collection of sea horses and the otters were just adorable.
Apparently one can’t head towards San Francisco without stopping off at Alameda to see the pinball museum.
Jessica figured finding reeds for her clarinet would be cheaper in the US and as it turns out she was dead on the mark – back home a reed costs us R50.00, here we managed to get a box of 10 with each costing a mere R18.00. However stopping at the music store did mean we were running late for dropping off the car and found ourselves smack bang in the middle of home time traffic.
And thus ensued a chain of events which lead us to staying at a completely different hotel, in a completely different section of San Francisco at a somewhat elevated price, with us keeping the car. Wouter has been worried about our accommodation in San Francisco since we arrived in the US, they never confirmed and when he phoned all he got was an answering machine. Turns out he had good reason to worry, the place appears to be derelict which is not something you want to encounter having driven all day and have 5 minutes to return a hire car. Out came the trusty guide book and armed with a cell phone I started making calls, third time a charm and that is how we have ended up at the Ocean Park Motel. Looks more glamorous on their website but we’re very happy with it. We have a room with two separate bedrooms, small bathroom and a bar fridge plus a microwave, what more could we ask for? Opting to stay in we raided the local deli for provisions (sandwiches and cool drink or in Wouter’s case as many different types of local beer he could carry) and had a picnic in the kids room.
San Francisco is beautiful (what we’ve seen of it so far and that’s been quite a bit with all the driving around trying to find accommodation) and I can’t wait to explore it more tomorrow.