Gay Pride took no Prisoners in San Fran!

Hello all!

Hope everyone is well!

The bus journey from Vegas to San Francisco was hellish. The journey was 20hrs (should have been 15 - like that makes it better!) and went via LA. Everyone in America was also trying to get to LA for the first anniversary of Michael Jacksons Death. So the bus was full of junior gangsters and Beyonce wannabes wearing Michael t-shirts, who sang (if you can call it that, more like swinging a bag of cats against the wall) all the way there. Lovely. After arriving late, and thinking we would miss our connection, we found out that it was also about 3 hrs late. So we hung around the bus station in LA for a couple of hours from 1am until 3am in the morning in a que of about 100 or so people. Its in a really glamourous part of town called South Central! Eventually, after stopping in every backwater town in California, we arrive in San Francisco about 5 hrs late.

On arrival we phone´d the person we were couch surfing with to find out he had mis-read our information and had nowhere for us to stay...... just what we needed! Thankfully he found one of his couch surfing friends who put us up for two nights. She was lovely and we had a great time with her, eating at the best Vietnamese restuarant in town! many thanks Hang! We love you Hang! (no we do - shes a great lady!)

Our first full day there turned out to be the same day as the San Francisco Gay Pride Carnival, and we thought Las Vegas was an eye opener! We spent a great afternoon there with Hang and her other couch surfing friend, with the highlights being watching the gay line dancing and a set by the Backstreet Boys! After that we drove up the coast over the Golden Gate bridge to the mountains north of SF to Mountplais, and the beach which was really beautiful, despite Pete sitting on an ants nest and getting his bum bitten!

In the next few days we moved to a hostel in downtown, rode the cable car to the pier and went on the Alcatraz tour which was really great. We would definitely recommend it if you ever get the chance. We especialy liked the spaghetti throwing riots in the dining hall!, and the fake heads the prisoners made for the night of their escape, plus the infomation about the Native American takeover of the island was also very interesting.

We couldn't spend much longer in SF as we had to get to LA for our last three nights before our onward flight, so we booked a bus (not Greyhound) to LA for the 4th of july celebrations!

We know we are a bit behind with the blog (currently in Peru writing this!) but hopefully will catch up soon enough. We are well and have had a fantastic time so far, and hope everyone is also well and enjoying a tradition English Summer (hosepipe ban and torrential rain from what I understand)

To all the people reading this blog - thanks and please add yourselves on as followers so you can make comments!

All our love to everyone,

Urvy and Pete. XXXX