And so it begins..

The first few days in San Fran have certainly been fun.
Coming from Sydney, it's interesting to see a city so different to what I am used to. The whole layout of the place and just how everything works is completely different.

In saying that, I was a bit shocked to walk out of the train station and have a Westfield's directly in front of me. I must note the Westfield's here is a lot nicer, but who wants to hear about that?

San Francisco is a city built on a whole lot of hills, its a bit more spread out that Sydney, with a lot more happening in the city center. I was pretty amused to see that the main square, Union Square (which we are staying only 300m from) is just an underground carpark with some grass and statues on top. It is nice, but I dunno, there's not that much going on in the park. Around it though there are heaps of awesome shops, I've finally found a place where you can get nice men's clothes for reasonable prices. Gone are the days of having to modify old clothes or spend $200 + to buy anything nice.

As many of you know I have already completed one of my life goals, buying a red Adidas tracksuit. Its just so awesome.. wow.

One thing a lot of people said before we came here was that San Francisco is a bit dangerous and there are heaps of angry homeless people around. I have to say I feel as safe here as I do in Sydney, if not more in some areas. It's true, there are a lot of homeless people, but they are a lot nicer than Sydney's homeless.

For example: In Sydney a homeless man would ask for money, then if rejected, swear at you and maybe walk after you yelling and swinging an umbrella at some unseen adversary.

Here however, we were walking to a diner in the middle of the night, and this homeless guy on the corner suddenly said "Why should you take a homeless girl out to dinner?" We were a bit confused.. He finished it off with "Because you can drop her off anywhere afterwards.."

Now that deserves a couple of dollars for sure. And this was after another nice homeless guy gave us directions to a diner that was open at 4AM because we couldn't find it.

I have to apologise for not putting up any photos; the internet cafe at this hostel doesn't have any USB connections so I will have to wait until we get to LA.

Ash and I are doing everything together here and it is so great. The months of full time work are really paying off now we have the money and time to do what we want. We've made some really cool friends at the hostel, and been hanging out the last couple of days. There is Steve, a design student from Cote D'Ivoire, Lorena from Spain, Marie and Steine from Norway and Dylan from Melbourne. Today most of us went to the Golden Gate bridge and then over to Haight-Ashbury, hippy town. Its a pretty cool pace and there are some amazing houses, photos of which you will be seeing later on.

There was a pretty amazing moment between us and Marie and Steine, when we realised we all loved 'Get Ready To Be Boyzvoiced'! That movie has created a special and mostly unknown bond between Australia and Norway, which only reveals itself in moments like that.

We hope everyone is having a mad time back at home, we miss you all so much. Tomorrow we head to Yosemite, before leaving on Saturday to make our fortunes in Vegas. As I can't drive yet, I'll have the Bentley shipped home on Monday, so get the L Plates ready dad.

Take care,

Shamus