Sunday 22nd March

And so into San Francisco! I always have mixed feelings about heading back into a big city after being in amazing natural places, but I have heard good things about this place. The journey from Santa Rosa only took about an hour, and we were both pretty excited when the Golden Gate Bridge came into view. After crossing the bridge into the city, we headed straight for the hostel, in the centre of the Mission District. The roads were busy, but not horrendous. We had a bit of trouble finding street parking near the hostel though, and ended up just putting the car in a parking lot. We unloaded our bags and had a little wander to find some food. We went to a place called the Mission Kitchen, seemed like a proper locals place which was really cool. Had a sandwich and then jumped back in the car to go for a proper look at the Golden Gate Bridge.
It was a strange experience seeing the bridge, as we had recently seen a documentary about it being a suicide hotspot, with about two people a month ending their lives here. The bridge is quite a spectacular creation, with amazing views surrounding it, but it can also represent a lot that is damaging about modern society. When you stand on the bridge with the surrounding beauty hampered by the incessant roar of six lanes of traffic, with tourists and their cameras crawling all over the place, you can feel a strange juxtaposition of utter crowded chaos and complete isolation from everyone around. You can imagine how someone contemplating suicide would feel coming to this place.
After leaving the bridge, we had a drive down to Ocean Beach, skirting Golden Gate Park. It was very windy so we just grabbed a coffee and pastry and didn’t hang around for too long. We got back to the hostel and realised it was that time of the day again, so off we went to check out some bars. There are a lot of cool untrendy bars in San Francisco (dives they call them over here, which means something a bit better than it does back home!) We went to a bar called Uptown first of all, which had been recommended in the Lonely Planet, and that was a pretty decent place. The barlady there suggested that we try one called Kilowatt, as we looked like we belonged there! We took that as a compliment and found that it was a really cool rock/metal bar. We met a guy behind the bar called Bradley who recommended some others that we should go to, and said we could meet him tomorrow night and he and his friend would take us round a few. We went to another called Lucky 13 which was decent but quiet, then headed to another called Zeitgeist. This place was really good, obviously a popular local hangout. They were doing food so I got a Sloppy Joe’s, chilli in a burger bun which was incredibly hot (for me, anyway). We got even more recommendations of places to go, although for tonight we were ready just to finish the night back at Kilowatt and head back to the hostel. A lady also leaving Zeitgeist gave us a lift over there in her pickup which was jolly nice of her. In Kilowatt, we met a couple of guys from out of town who were here for a hockey match, they had their sticks with them so we ended up playing hockey in the street in the early hours of the morning!