Our favourite city in the States...

Without flowers in our hair but with Yosemite dust in our shoes we arrived in San Francisco after the 3 1/2 hour drive from the National Park. Exhausted we checked into the HI City Center Youth Hostel on Ellis street. That area of downtown turned out not to be a really nice place to hang out a night...lots of drunken an drugged people on the streets...but then again, interesting to see and not feeling bad about missing out on that :)

After a good bagel breakfast at the hostel, we got a map from the frontdesk at the hostel and hit the streets. Up and down, up and down, up, up, up and down and we arrived at Fishermens Warf. :) It was great relaxing after over 2 weeks on the road, just watching all the different people walk by, taking in the air and sounds of the city and the bay...just chilling... :)

Then it was time for some shopping and dinner at yet another 50s style diner in downtown San Francisco.

The next day was jail time...we left Pier 33 on a ferry and arrived 15 minutes later on Alcatraz. After hiking up to the cell block building and going through a very informative audio tour, one of the park rangers gave us a brilliant and fun presentation about some of the most infamous prisoners on the island, such as Georges "Machine Gun" Kelly and the Birdman of Alcatraz (goooooooooogle them :)). Again, he knew where Luxembourg was and was saying, in his loud voice so that all of the cell block dining hall could hear it: "It's so small that, when driving through Luxembourg from France to Germany, you shouldn't sneeze and close your eyes, coz you'll miss it." :) Oh well...

We hiked all the way back to the hostel and packed our stuff for the next day's drive along the coastal highway via Monterrey to Pismo Beach. Surfin' USA... :)

Here some impressions of the roads and the houses:

And we found our "Madeleine de Proust" : Chewing gum cigarettes!!!:)