A little bit of history

We wake up excited by our first day in San Francisco. Or at least we kind of do. I'm pretty hungover but Izy persuades me to get up and embrace the hotel breakfast which is passable (we've been in better places) at least until we reach the nearest Starbucks.

The sun is shining and we wander up through Union Square and north to North Beach to the Beat Museum. On the way we stumble across a Chinese Street Festival which is teeming with crowds and street stalls and generally lots of fun. I manage to get some good photos - our new camera has seen a lot of action this holiday.

The Beat Museum is really good - obviously the owners are pretty clued into the whole scene and in touch with the defendants of the legendary Neil Cassidy and the director and actors of the new film of On the Road. We have a slightly sad chat about the demise of Jack Kerouac - Izy has been re-reading Big Sur on the drive up Highway 1 - and spend quite a while looking around the museum which is really interesting and informative if a little lacking in actual stuff - the referee shirt worn by Neil Cassidy while driving Ken Kasey's Further Bus is the only actual relic of the period - although the photos and video interviews are fascinating. Afterwards we go to the famous City Lights bookshop - which was the publisher of most of the seminal Beat writing - including Howl which was the subject of an obscenity trial in the late 50s. Mindful of how small our suitcases are we try, however, not to get too carried away at the till but Izy gets a few postcards and its good to have been there.

After all of that, we're off to Fisherman's Wharf to experience the famous arcade museum. The huge former shipping warehouse has hundreds of well-preserved arcade machines and so on from as early as the late 1800s. These include Waltzer pianos and some pretty tricky antique baseball games - all completely playable. I am in my element getting to grips with a classic Star Wars arcade machine and finally the brilliant Pirates of the Caribbean pinball machine after i manage to wrestle the controls off an annoyingly tenacious 40 year old man. Izy wanders around reading up about the emergence of the fairground culture in turn of the century America and wracking up the high scores on Skee Ball.

Finally as the chill sets in in the late afternoon light, we scale the hilly heights back to our hotel where we settle in with take away sushi to watch the Real Housewives of Atlanta followed by the Real Housewives of Miami and then, for a bit of culture, the Real Housewives of New Jersey - a classic old school American hotel experience.

Day 2

We feel much more human now although we're desperate for breakfast. We head out down Montana Av. until we find a Starbucks where we have a wonderful time listening to a right-wing local discussing some alternative (read extreme) approaches to foreign policy with some of his acquaintances. We gobble down some yogurt and plan our day. Shopping and the beach - hell yeah!
We hit the 3rd street shops and we don't make it very far before we make our first purchase, the very first shop! We buy some natty grey corduroys for me. The second shop we buy a gorgeous leather skirt for my wife.
Luckily for our wallets thats all we buy but we continue down 3rd until we hit the bi-weekly farmers market. We peruse the wares for a bit and end up buying some peaches. It all looks lovely though and we make a vow to visit the farmers market back home.
We head back out to the shore and walk along until we get to Santa Monica pier. Its a pleasure pier and we find a pleasure arcade that  has a selection of older arcade machines such as Galaga and Pacman. At the end they have - OH MY GOD - a pinball section that has Star wars Ep1. This is a pinball 2000 machine that had a monitor in the translate (the upright part at the back) that is pointed down at the glass of the table. The effect is to make it look like theres a video playing in midair over the table and the table components. I almost pass out with excitement! As the ball passes over certain switches the game can make it look like you hit objects in the screen. This is only the 2nd time I've seen one of these and and the first time I've had a chance to play one. Alas, on inserting a coin it becomes apparent that the machine is in a bad state of repay and its unplayable. After confronting the pin ball wizard about the poor state of this beautiful machine, I get a refund and play some Addams family and World tour poker instead. Neither is in great condition but they're playable. I do terribly but my wife quite likes the look of it and decides to have her first ever game of pinball!! She's a natural - like she is at most things. Unlike me, she's good enough to win a free game is kind enough to share it with me with us doing one flipper each. We then play a little skeeball - yes i know, we'd never heard of it either - and she kicks my butt.
After the arcade we have a look around the theme park and the rest of the pier. We take lots of photos, mainly of birds sitting on things, and then we get a hotdog and hit the beach. Excitingly, a bird swoops down and steals our little pot of mayonnaise. We are powerless to do anything but watch it fly off and marvel at its well-developed palate.
Its quite windy which nicely offsets the heat and we sit sunbathing for a bit. We try the water but its a bit cold for my tastes. If it wasn't so windy it'd probably be fine I expect.
We head back to the hotel and take a swim in the pool. Its 84 degrees which is lovely.
In the evening we head back to the high street area and find a lovely Sushi tapas restaurant of some repute. We try some salmon sashimi and a tuna dish that has us rolling our own maki rolls. We finish it off with a teriyaki style omelette with noodles and some prawn dumplings. Yum!
Tomorrow we plan to hit Hollywood!