Day Five

Day Five is easy to write about.

I woke up late, with a sore stomach (the same sore stomach as the day before). Stayed in bed and watched TV till 1pm. Got off my sorry ass and out to eat, ate, walked around some parts of town that I hadn't seen (walked for far too long, and couldn't be frucked taking pictures), came back to hotel. More TV followed by barfing and writing this blog post. YAY!

I suppose this is compulsory for an overseas trip, even if you are in a 'western country', and especially because I have _never_ had this happen at home. I will label it Murphy's law.

I have noticed that I have not noticed a single McDonalds in San Francisco. I have also noticed many poorly made, cheesy ads on TV, the type you would see on Prime in NZ; much of these are ads for drugs...

Day Four

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Enough said, I'm going to bed.

Edit: It would only be right to give a proper run down of Day Four (Friday 29th).

So the big plan was to rent a bike and ride around the city, and I did. I hadn't rode a bike in years, and never on the road... meh. The plan was to go close to the entrance to the bridge, but continue on down the Pacific Coast and then eastward through golden gate park. As it happened I came right up to the bridge entrance and then went the wrong way to effectively reverse the direction of my journey, this would be a costly mistake...

The day was sunny and perfect and the ride along the shore offered great dramatic views of the bridge. The bridge entrance is at the top of a hill and it was painful to leave it behind knowing that I would have to make the uphill journey again. I rode a long way, under the impression I was going the right way, until it all looked completely bizarre and there was no Pacific Ocean to be seen. After asking for directions to Golden gate park I eventually made it, and as with everything in San Fran: it's not as flat as it looks on the map.

I stopped at the de Young Museum of Fine arts for lunch but couldn't help but buy tickets to the galleries and the Chihuly exhibit. Dale Chihuly is a 'glass blowing artist' (my terminology) and the exhibition was friggin amazing, so much intricacy and detail and colour... I took a million photos (the best of which will be up on picasa). After the glass work, the rest of the museum was pretty avg, but I still went around and there some cool things. Overall, I spent close to 3 hours at the de Young and so had to gaps it towards the sea. (Across the road was the Academy of Sciences, I was gutted that it was closed for renovation).

Along the (downhill, yay!) ride to the coast a cold breeze started to waft over the land, and by the time I got to the coast... there was no coast. The mist had come in and it was wet and cold. It did help the cruel bike up to the bridge, but the bridge was in mist and I was pissed. I forgot to mention that about the time I left the de Young, my stomach had started to hurt (you guys already know where this leads) and at the bridge I was hurting pretty bad. So I cycled across, not seeing the city nor the tops of the towers. On the other side I had dinner near the ferry terminal, and then waited over an hour for said ferry back to SF. I got there with 15min before the return deadline, and had to cycle like mad to make it back on time.

Day Two

The plan for this day was to go to 'Fisherman's Wharf', a much mentioned tourist destination. It was the perfect chance to catch the cable car. En route to the cable car turnaround, I noticed a gallery and stopped there. Initially I felt uneasy because of the large number of staff pacing around staring you down, and the comparatively small number of visitors. It turns out that this gallery is very rich, displaying paintings by the likes of Picasso and Renoir (to drop the two names that I had heard before entering). The staff are friendly though, and one described to me the artist whos every single piece I like (John D. Anderson : check it out and my other photos here (they are trickling in)).

Anyway, back to my mission, avoided the painfully long line for tickets by walking 40m to the information office, but was distracted again. I walked into what looked like a small mall but had like 9 floors (at least) and docked heaps of well-known stores (none that I can remember, apart from Abercrombie & Fitch: which I walked into to see what the jig was).

The cable car turnaround is manually operated: the car goes on a turn table and you push it. Fun times. Indeed, because holding on to the outside of the cable car is kinda fun. I stopped at Lombard St, the crookedest street in the world:



Finally to Fisherman's wharf... two piers and a whole lotta restaurants (bring money). It was ~3pm by this time and I was starving, so had lunch/dinner at a swish seafood restaurant. I walked around for ages, there are also many stores (bring money), lots of cool stuff but nothing cool enough. There is a random sea lion colony that hangs out at the pier as well.

The one thing I did decide to go into was the Ripley's: Believe it or not! museum. Some stuff made my smile, other stuff made me cringe, but overall it was pretty avg. A cable car ride back to the hotel was followed by several hours of sifting through photos and blog writing, so I hope someone is reading this (Antony seems to be (that's right he gets a mention for commenting)).

Travelling alone is ok, you don't have to plan anything and you can walk/run as slow/fast as you want; on the other hand having a buddy would be nice. I've been trying to find something to do in the evenings, but the oneness and the 21 drinking age makes it... fail.

Day One

I left my parents happy and hopeful for while also sad and worried, a fun mix of emotions. Some of this rubbed off on me, but I stayed excited (read: welling up). This was my first time away from home good and proper and I hadn't manage to convince anyone of my on-to-itness while in Auckland.

I was allowed two bags of 23kg each with 7kg carry on, mine were 21.6, 23.0 and 7.6kg respectively + laptop bag :D. On the plane I managed to fall asleep for a decent while: never before have I. 'Lars and the real girl' is a great movie, serious and hilarious; 'Chaos theory' isn't too bad either. Off the plane I rushed (as fast as one can rush carrying four bags of the aforementioned weight) up an escalator to the hotel shuttle station and to the Hotel! Points forward out of open shuttle door Fresh Prince styles.

The Hotel Mayflower really is pretty sweet, clearly old, but clean and functioning where it matters. A little luxurious and a little expensive for a student, but someone managed to convince out of a Hostel lest 4 months worth of stuff mysteriously vanished. I united myself with the WWW and showered before hitting this place they like to call San Francisco.

Being 3pm there weren't many options but to walk around... so I did. The city is big but it's not too daunting to walk everywhere. I had been hungry for ages so my first mission was to find food, and I had also completely forgotten to bring any sort of power adapter (doh #1) so that had to be acquired. I walked to South-East to Union square (it's famous, didn't you know!?) - Gucci, Louis Vuiton, ... keep walking; East to be exact, through the 'Fincancial district' (picking up a cherry turnover on the way) and to the Embarcadero, which is seaside. Some old American lady who seemed to like to talk talked to me for a while, and then on a whim went talked to someone without any acknowledgement, meh.

I like SF (that's what us cool people like to call it). It's like Auckland but:

• More higher
• More wider
• More people
• More character
• Mo' money

In Auckland you're used to seeing the tops of buildings in your field of vision, to achieve the same result here one has to look up all the time, which I was doing, and I probably looked like a douche. All the roads are square and there isn't a consensus on a hill direction relative to the water so it's easy to get disorientated (I, ofcourse, did not :P).

I didn't want to spend much on a first night dinner, and the only place where I was gonna find a cooperative restaurant was in Chinatown. Dinner was decent. Afterward I went straight ¿home, booked an Alcatraz trip (two days in advance), tried to find something on the many tv channels, failed and then slept.

There will be pictures of all this on Picasa... soon.

Hello World!

Welcome to the blog of Bojan. If you're reading this then you probably already know me, and that I'm leaving for exchange to the University of Toronto... today! The purpose of this blog is to chronicle that part in between leaving and coming back.

The plan is to stop by San Francisco for 5 nights before Toronto, and afterwards (December) there is time to fill with as of yet undetermined travel. Naturally I intend to see the Niagara Falls, New York, Boston, Montreal etc. so there should be enough goings on to keep me posting. This morning I woke and thought: 'shit, wtf', this may or may not become the motto of the trip.

I have to get used to blogging, writing this feels gump, I'll probably edit it; and of course the interesting stuff hasn't happened yet. Remember to comment so that I know Real People (tm) are reading this.