San Francisco Travel and Day 1

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Just a short checkin, as a) I am on my phone, b) I'm trying posting via email for the first time, and c) after thirty hours on bus and train and bus again (okay, more like 34 hours) I'm really tired and exhausted and looking forward to a real bed.

Sleeping twisted like a pretzel is surprisingly not fun.

We took off from KSS Tuesday evening pretty much on time at 11 p.m. and arrived in Vancouver at 3 a.m., where we had breakfast at a McDonald's.

Since breakfast starts to get served at 4 a.m. at the earliest, we all had normal stuff like wraps or cheeseburgers and coffee and smoothies. All in all, it was a fun experience.

Our Amtrak bus that brought us from Vancouver to Seattle showed up at 5.30 a.m. and my seatmate from before and I grabber about the same seats again, and I even managed to sleep a couple of minutes.

Seattle is an awesome city, and we boarded the Amtrak train there at around 9 a.m..

Sleeping on the train was difficult. Jenny (my seatmate) and I spent the time talking and reading and sleeping in bursts of about 40 minutes no matter the time, and I finally managed to sleep for about an hour at around ten p.m. and again from about two to six o'clock--take all these numbers with a grain of salt, as my sense of time was completely wrecked by the bus and train ride.

The 30 hours seem in retrospect both unbelievably long and shorter than expected; when the train pulled to a stop in Emeryville, California and we got off, it was almost a surprise that we were actually there already.

I was clad in just a pair of sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt, as the ac on the train was simply vicious, and within seconds I, as most others, was sweating badly.

It wasn't even nine a.m. yet and yet the sun was already super hot!

The bus ride to San Francisco was spent gawking out of the window, and never before has a one hour bus ride felt quite so short.

California and San Francisco simply are beautiful, and very interesting--the twelve lanes (six in our direction, six in the other) were only one amazing thing.

We dropped half of the students and four of our five chaperones at the Alcatraz landing off and went on to the hostel, where we unloaded the bags, freshened up and went to explore the area.

Jenny and I stuck close together, and we bought post cards and a couple of souvenirs. I also started assembling the two birthday presents I still owe two of my best friends!

Since it was so unbelievably warm, we went up to our ankles into the pleasingly cool water, before we grabbed lunch at subway ($3 for a six-inch Roasted Chicken Breast as the May special... how could I resist?) and met up with the rest of our group in front of Hard Rock Café (the only condition for exploring the area had been 'at least two people per group').

We then went on to Alcatraz ourselves--to meet the official student-teacher ratio(7-1), three of our teachers had to go again, but they said later on it was more blessing than curse.

The guided audio tour we had was awesome and super interesting, and after catching the 5.15 ferry back to SF, we checked i to the hostel (it's a 30 min walk away from the Fisher Man's Wharf area, stowed our belongings away and then Jenn and I went back to the wharf area, while others finally had their shower.

Jenn grabbed some Fish n Chips and I another Sub, and we wrote postcards/journals for a bit, before the sun set and we had to leave to be able to walk back while it was still light outside.

Once we were back, we took a shower--most everybody else was still out, so we had the room and the washroom mostly to ourselves, and then there was another meeting to let us know the plans for tomorrow.

I have already taken over 200 pictures and will probably get Jenn's, Aislinn's and (hopefully) Brienne's pictures, as they have far superior cameras.

And since my night will be over in roughly 8 hours, I'm signing off with this. Just let me tell you, California really is super sunny and warm and AWESOME!!

♥♡♥♡Love,

Julia ♡♥♡♥
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