Here’s where you can see some photos http://picasaweb.google.com/hannah.a...

Manda picked me up Saturday lunchtime from the San Francisco airport, and we dropped my bags off at the Hotel Monaco, and only taking the time to snap a couple of photos of the room, we went off to experience the sites of San Francisco. First stop was riding a cable car. We walk to the street that ends with a turnstile for the cablecar to turn around at, and we purchase our tickets and are told we need to take a free shuttle to another street to get on the cablecar. We get dropped off with a bus load of people at the side of the road somewhere and are told this is where we must wait to be picked up, so we wait and we wait and we wait until another bus comes with more people, some people get off here, but most of the people that we were waiting with get back on. We decided to wait, as we had already waited a while, and we were rewarded finally with a cable car.
Hmm, riding a cable car was okay, but it didn't nearly go for long enough, so I was a little dissappointed with the whole deal. Not a good look for a new tourist to the city.

We rode to Pier 39, on fisherman’s wharf and walked around the stores, very touristy, you can see golden gate bridge, and alcatraz in the distance. I had a pretzel! They taste like donuts.

San Francisco is very big on organic fruit and vegetables, and wee markets, I found a fruit that I've never heard of before called a "Pluot" - 1/2 Plum, 1/2 Apricot.

Coffees here are huge, their small size cup fits 12oz, which is like a medium/large in NZ!

We met Manda's sister Monica, and her boyfriend Mike at a lovely restaurant that had tapas, which was lovely, we had quail, chorizo, lomo (ham), peppers/tomatoes/watermelon salad, beef, patatos bravas, a couple bottles of wine...

Then we went to a bar called Bourbon & Branch. It’s an exclusive bar, where you can only get in by making a reservation and giving a password at the door. It’s modelled on a SpeakEasy (for those that don't know that during the prohibition (no alcohol) in America, you could still have a great time if you knew where to find it). It was really dark inside, all lit by candlelight. If you are late for your reservation it will go to someone else, so we needed to rush to get there from the restaurant. A taxi slows down to pick us up but says he can't take 5 people and droves off. Luckily, a limo pulls up and offers to take us to where we needed to go!

We get the mezzanine floor (VIP stylez), and we have it for an hour. Very nice, very strong cocktails! I think we managed three rounds while we were there. All paid for by Monica's boyfriend (I will have to leave them a gift or something to thank them for the dinner and the evening). The waitress’s boyfriend was actually from twizel! (Kiwis are everywhere even in speakeasys) We received an amuse-bouche (sp?) – a little taster cocktail on the house first, which had sparkling wine and cassis liquer.

Our booking was for an hour, but we were allowed to stay for another halfhour as the next booking didn’t show.

When we had to leave, we went through a fake bookcase door to another “public” bar so we couldn’t go back through to the bar we were at. It was all really cool, 1920’s themed, the waitress wore flapper style dresses.

Sunday, Manda and her fiance Matt drove me to Napa Valley (about 1.5 hours away). I got to go over the Golden Gate bridge. Napa Valley is home to so many vineyards. We had lots of tastings of different wines, you go to a winery and pay to sample a selection of wines and the pourer (sommeiler) talks you through the wine, the region etc.

At our last stop, the guy who was pouring the wine was training to be a master sommelier, and knew quite a bit about NZ wines. He was also the chef there, and on Sundays runs cooking classes. He poured us a few more wines extra including a $180 bottle of merlot! I don't like reds as a rule, but belie