Oakland and San Francisco

Upon arriving in the Bay Area, being struck down almost immediately by the mother-of-all-colds did not stop me from spending all day pounding the pavements in search of the 'sights'.  In the absence of a 'day job' (I do realise how awesome that is), I've discovered there's a special kind of guilt that comes with not 'achieving' enough when you're travelling.  I thought I was pretty immune to this - before I left I read an article by someone who 'hates sight-seeing' and identified strongly with it, believing myself to be above the need to cram in 'everything' in a particular place.  Wrong!

But if you're not cramming in 'everything', what do you do? Sit in a cafe for a couple of hours, explore the neighbourhood over a series of days... an approach recommended by followers of the Slow Travel movement, which I'd been reading about before my departure.

I've surprised myself with just how guilty this 'taking it slow' approach makes me feel - and yet when I've taken my own advice and actually spent 2 hours in a restaurant, talking to the bartender and watching people go by, those have been the best times of my trip.  I seem to be a very slow learner.

This last week in Portland has helped me to slow down a little.  If for no other reason than that Portland is a pretty slow, chilled town.  The fact that crafting is a cool thing with young folk potentially ought to have been a clue.  It's been my fave stop so far - but first, I'll fill you in on my must-fit-it-in-but-be-relaxed San Francisco journey - which was also pretty great at times.

Oakland

I stayed four nights in Oakland with Lauri, my host through Airbnb.com - new favourite travel site ever.  The idea is that you pay the host a fee for a room in their home - halfway between couch-surfing and BnB.

Lauri's Oakland apartment was a sage-scented, hippie haven (toilet lid down for feng shui, please), and Lauri was a wonderful host - giving me a tour of the neighbourhood and recommending the best vintage store/community crystal shop and common altar/co-op bakery/neighbourhood redwood grove.  The apartment was also on the shore of Lake Merrit, a beautiful spot for evening walks, with Canada geese, squirrels and beautiful gardens.

Lake Merritt

A neighbourhood mural showing the different countries represented in the community.  In between the Tasmanian devils and NZ punga ferns, and the Egyptian/Gauguin-looking Polynesian women, we have Kiwis and hobbits.  

World newspapers at a campus library, Berkeley.  All the other front pages were covering world politics/natural disasters... in New Zealand, Sonny Bill was giving his girlfriend an awkward kiss. Cheers NZ Herald. 

Pretty awesome catchphrase for a University book store

Mosaic at the Paramount Theatre, central Oakland

The Berkeley Naked Hippie Experience

The highlight (?) of my Oakland experience had to be the redwood-grove spa in some old guy's back yard in Berkeley.   Lauri tentatively suggested it on about my third day staying with her.  The deal is this: guy has a redwood grove in his backyard.  Puts a hot tub there in the 60s, wants his friends to use it.  Instals key pad.  Word gets out - everyone's now welcome, code changed regularly so you have to know him or know-someone-who-knows-him to use it.  Other than that, all welcome - no talking, clothing optional.

Silence!

Weird, kinda scary, potentially beautiful - you can't say no.  After finding the shingle house and holding my breath to let myself in with the secret code, I found myself in a quiet redwood grove with wooden platforms for people to chill out on, and a hot-hot-tub.  About three other people, one discreetly practicing naked yoga in the corner (etiquette: point the downward-dog at the fence...), another reading the New Yorker in a hammock.  Once you get over the no-talking, most-people-are-naked vibe, it was the most stunning spot.


After an hour of that carry-on I was more relaxed than I'd been the whole trip, and on the bus ride home I felt like an initiated member of a secret hippie society, wondering whether anybody on the bus knowingly noted my beetroot-red hot-tub legs as a sign that I was one of the club...

San Francisco 

After arriving and mistakenly walking directly through the heart of the Tenderloin (do I have a dollar/would I like some meth?), my first few days at the City Center hostel were a little hectic.  Things turned around once I switched to another hostel and busted the bank on a room of my own (Virginia was onto something).
Some highlights of my stay in San Francisco:

China Town tour - first Buddhist temple in the US

Hand-made fortune cookies - apparently these were invented in San Francisco.  Still warm & super delicious.

Tea tasting from a full-on Chinese Missy Elliot lady

Britex fabrics - 4 floors open 'till 9

Living roof at the California Academy of Sciences - one of the best museums I've been to, amazing.

'gator at the Academy of Sciences

...and glow-in-the-dark sea anemones!

...and a rain forest that you could walk under, around and up while butterflies flitted about your head. Amazing.

North Beach/Little Italy

Presidio military cemetery (potentially lost whilst looking for the bridge...)

I had planned on staying longer in SF, but after a week the loud rush of the city had me wanting to head for a quieter spot.  So, an Amtrak train (my first yet, luxurious) brought me to Portland ahead of schedule - right decision.  People are chill here, there's a distinct lack of 'sights', and the coffee is the best yet.

But for now that's more than enough from me!  Lots of love 'till next time,

Sarah x

San Francisco: happy and healthy again after a cold, a bung leg and hostels with bad karma

 

The heading explains the quiet 'round here, so let me update you on where I've been!  Monterey/Santa Cruz/Oakland/San Francisco...  Let's start at the beginning!

On the road - San Luis Obispo to Monterey

Getting to Monterey from San Luis Obispo, where my last post left off, was somewhat of a drama.  Turns out the Amtrak trains are replaced by buses, as the rails are being worked on.  This translates into a transfer after dark in a rural Californian Mexican-gang-town. (Something I didn't realise upon purchasing tickets...) 

Fortunately I missed my transfer (sorry Salinas and your shady railway station, another time...) and had to be dropped off in Gilroy (garlic capital of the world) in the hopes of catching a late bus to Santa Cruz.  Upon hearing my obviously clueless and mildly panic-stricken enquiries at a gas station about finding the bus stop, a man introduced himself and his wife, talking for a while and assuring me they weren't shady (they couldn't have looked it for trying), and insisted they drive me to the (shady) station.  

Not only did they drive me, they checked the station was well lit and sussed the timetable for me, making sure the bus wasn't too far off.  Romero and Sandra saved my bacon big time, and were only the first in a string of wonderful people I met on this leg of my trip.  

I also met this an ancient Chinese guy on the bus who told me all about his book ("you will understand these things more when you buy my book"), recounted tales of lovers from his youth, and sang me a song he had written for his wife - very well, and very loud!

Monterey

After arriving in the dark in Monterey I spent all night trying to figure out how to get to Santa Cruz the next evening without a stopover in Salinas (turns out that as well as being a scary gang-town it's also a buzzing transport hub - thanks, Amtrak).  Booking on an $80 USD shuttle later, I set out the next morning to explore  Monterey's major claims to fame: its first-class aquarium and Cannery Row, the former heart of Monterey's sardine-canning industry made famous via John Steinbeck. (The irony of the Steinbeck-themed trinket stores...)

The waterfront area and Cannery Row were fairly typical tourist-strip type stuff, similar to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco.  Yet the absence of crazy crowds and the beautiful winter light made it feel very peaceful - and the otters hanging out in the bay were adorable!! 

The aquarium lived up to its reputation and chilled me out after the transport mission!  The highlight was probably this guy - surely the ugliest fish in the world:

Ocean sunfish

 Next up was a whale-watching mission setting out from Monterey wharf - 4 grey whales migrating south, and a pod of approximately 1500 (!) long-beaked common dolphins.

It was a beautiful day to be out on the water, and the views back to Monterey were gorgeous.  That's the peninsula at Pebble Beach (below), home of the AT&T golf tournament, which was starting the next day.

On the boat I met a lovely couple in their mid-60s - Cate and Jim - who invited me to join them for dinner, and stay at their Pebble Beach home.  Another couple introduced themselves to say they were driving up the coast the next day, and would be happy to make a detour to Santa Cruz for me.

Needless to say, I have been bowled over by the kindness of the folks I have met on my trip.  It's quite an experience to accept hospitality and kindness, knowing that I cannot possibly give anything in return.  I'm sure there's a lesson in there.  At any rate, this is the lovely Cate:

And a picture taken on my morning walk around the neighbourhood (seeing deer, bluejays and beautiful Monterey pine forest).

Cate and Jim took me for a lovely dinner at their club, and made me feel like one of the family (me: Are you sure you don't mind my staying? Cate: What?! I was just thinking it was a shame both my boys are married!!), stuffing my backpack with treats and tissues when I left the next morning.  I was sad to go!

Santa Cruz

My ride to Santa Cruz with the couple from the ferry (Maria and Lee, civil engineer and ex-naval officer) involved a stop for seafood lunch in Elkhorn Slough ("Al-korn Slew").  Lobster bibs ahoy!

Maria

Santa Cruz proved to be a relatively quiet town, although a walk along the jetty rewarded me with sea lions and otters playing in the waves, and the old boardwalk looked fabulous in the wind and surf:

The folk here tended to be super new-age touchy-feely, yet somehow... aloof?  The vibe is summed up in the Lonely Planet guide entry for Santa Cruz:

"The City Council spends more of its time debating whether medical marijuana dispensaries should be allowed than figuring out ways to help downtown's homeless population."

Ouch.  Maybe I'd just been spoilt by the people I'd met over the previous days/maybe it was the mother-of-all-colds that was setting in... either way, when it came to push on I wasn't heartbroken to leave Santa Cruz behind.

The next chapter in my journey begins in Oakland, San Francisco - but this is an enormous post! So, I'm going to head out to Golden Gate park (apparently there's a museum with a RAIN FOREST inside!!) and hopefully make it to the Mission district for a wee explore.  If you've made it all the way to the bottom of the post, well done!  I'll report back soon with more Californian tales - soon to be Oregonian, next stop: Portland.

Lots of love,

Sarah

Hello from sunny California!

Having touched down on 1 Feb, these first four days have been an absolute blast.  My jetlag-cure of choice - intense Santa Monica yoga - proved a great start to a fun-filled couple of days, based at the HI-Santa Monica hostel.  Santa Monica has been a fabulous introduction to the US, and people have proven overwhelmingly helpful - not the fake 1-second smile you hear of, but rather genuinely interested and eager to help.

Some initial observations from my time so far:

I was told to be prepared for the number of homeless people here.  It hasn't so much been the number of homeless people as the fact that, by and large, these folk look like average, 'normal' people - a couple of people I've thought might be heading to the same hostel as me, as they were carrying backpacks and seemed pretty onto it.  Then they'd dip into a bin.  I don't know enough about the American healthcare (specifically psychiatric care) system, but what kind of a safety net can there be if these folk don't have a roof over their heads?

Another thing I've noticed is the prevailing 'positivity will cure all' attitude mixed with a kind of New Age approach to life.  Everything from a slight nutter on the bus "oh, you're a QUIET one? It's fine if you don't wanna TALK to me, this is a FREE COUNTRY, but you shouldn't BOTTLE THINGS UP man, I can sleep at night, I just say what I want and then I'm free, I sleep like a BABY" at about 1000 decibels (This was followed by a recommendation that we try the cuisine at a place called Fat Burger - !!) to a refrain I've heard from a few people that times are hard in the US but you know, you've just got to WANT work, and be POSITIVE.  Folks that can't get work must just not have the right frame of MIND, man.  

It's a strange mixture that presents as laid-back but has some weird ideology behind it - I find it hard to place where someone will stand on any particular issue, or to work out the framework that some of these folks are operating on...

On another note, overall people are ridiculously helpful, and the food is AMAZING.  Mexican burritos, vegan quinoa salad, farmers' market seed-bread, red-velvet cupcakes and sugary peanut-butter have all been an absolute delight, and a contradiction to the stereotype of rubbish American food.  I'm sure being in health-obsessed California helps with that too.

In terms of What I've Been Doing, I've managed to squeeze a lot into my couple of days in Santa Monica. Highlights included:

An early morning jog on Santa Monica beach

heading to Hollywood for some delicious Mexican with Rebecca and Shirin from the hostel

Hiring a bike and heading along the beach from Santa Monica to Venice (crazy stores, crazy people, and 'Botox on the Beach')

Exploring the canals in Venice

Oversized margheritas at a local dive-bar (karaoke Thursday - turns out everyone here wants to be a pop star = amazing free concert!)

 a night out at a 'British pub' (all things British seems to be very popular here, which is slightly bizarre...).

After two great days in Santa Monica, an Amtrak bus service yesterday brought me safely to the beautiful town San Luis Obispo (approximately half-way between San Francisco and Los Angeles). At the centre of the town is a beautiful old Spanish Mission:

San Luis is a quaint, affluent seaside town where people are chilled out and nothing happens in a hurry.  A fantastic spot to kick back and catch up on postcards and photos. 


So, this afternoon it's off on another bus to Monterey before heading up coast to Santa Cruz and eventually San Francisco.  Here's hoping for more of the beautiful weather and friendly people.


Sarah