San Francisco - First Impressions

We woke up at 4:45AM on Monday (Jannie promised to be grumpy and did not disappoint) for our flight to sunny California. And just in time too to avoid a major cold snap on the east coast with "flurries" and temperature no higher than freezing (the newscasters blame Canadian air for this). Our last week had been unseasonably warm - was it any coincidence that this was the week that NY really came together for us and that we realised just how fantastic it is as a city?

First impressions of San Francisco - deserted, quiet, super friendly and warm. The first few days we must have still been wearing our NY faces (lots of people told us to smile more) and we were certainly still psychologically back in Manhattan as we could not believe how quiet SF was. "Where are all the people?" we kept asking. "It's soooo quiet!"

San Francisco has a reputation for being expensive, but we've already discovered a local bar that has $2.50 cocktails (good ones too!) and free pool, and no meal has been more than $30 so far, which qualified as a "cheap one" in NYC but here is delicious and filling and seemingly the average.

So we are really enjoying it, and staying in a hotel means it feels like a holiday for a change and we just did a 16km trek from Sausalito across the Golden Gate Bridge and about to head off to a Christmas tree lighting ceremony so this blog post must be a short one...