Friday, January 23, 2004

Where's my heart? I know I left it round here somewhere...

Me: Anne, do you feel like the crew of the Enterprise in Star Trek IV?
Anne: No.
Me: How about Nicolas Cage in The Rock?
Anne: Are we doing this again?
Me: What about that wet lawyer (Harrison Fox) in Crazy Like a Fox?
Anne: Just get on with the blog.

That's right, we're no longer in LA, but we're still under Govenor Swarzenegger's juristiction.

We're in San Francisco.

I've been here before, in 1995. I remember liking it, and it was here that I was first wolf-whistled by a man. (Anyone who says that that's why I liked it here is lying.)

We arrived on Wednesday afternoon (flew from LA) and checked into the hostel we'd booked. The hostels in Oz and NZ were generally of a high standard, so we were a little shocked to find that our first US hostel is a big pile of poo. The kitchen facilities are woeful (so it's lucky food's so cheap here) and, despite a strict "no alcohol and drugs policy", the loos smell of cannabis. We spent Thursday morning looking for a cheap hotel. We walked for miles and miles to check out the hotels for which we could find discounts online or in voucher books. We eventually found one, and booked it for Friday, Saturday and Sunday (we fly home on Monday!)

Whilst in the hotel lobby, we got talking to a friendly Yank. He said he loves the English. There's a guy at his gym who's English he said. He then told us a longish anecdote about this guy. After a while I realised that this anecdote was all about traffic problems in San Francisco, and had nothing to do with the fact this guy was English. I was waiting for the bit where a linguistic or cultural difference caused a hilarious misunderstanding (e.g. "...and the guy turned white when I said I'd tapped her gently on her fanny") but it didn't come. Hmmm.

I did laugh though when the Yank said that this Brit was an "African American". I nearly said "You mean he's black?", but was afraid that would be too much for the American mind.

Finally, the hotel booked, we spent the rest of the day enjoying the city. We've actually done a little shopping here - our budgeting mentality going out the window a little bit. We love the big bookshops they have here. The Borders bookshop on Union Square has a cafe, into which you can take books and mags to read whilst you drink your coffee. I've become addicted to UK magazines, and can't wait to get home to devour some more.

Later, Anne and I had a row about Linux.