San Francisco #1

I've now been in San Francisco for a day and a half. I'm not sure if it's because I'm staying with my friend Carmen and not at a hotel or hostel, but it all feels so... normal. Just like me going to Melbourne or Brisbane or somewhere in Australia. Yes I'm hearing American accents, but Carmen's is familiar to me and I guess I hear them on TV all the time, so I'm kind of desensitized to that. There's no real culture shock (except the food, OMG the portion sizes! HUGE! It's such a WASTE of food, who eats that much? And this is in San Francisco, which is a rich city, in California, which is a relatively health state, I'm not hitting any of the mid-west states where apparently it's all just grease and massive everything - including people) because it's very similar to an Australian city. Looks-wise it's a little bit like Melbourne, with the trams and straight streets in the city and very minimalist style of architecture. It even has the slightly weird and changeable weather patterns. It's not so much the 4 seasons in one day, but it can be really chilly and then really hot within the same hour. Very odd. And confusing for my wardrobe because I didn't really plan for much cold weather!

So far Carmen has taken me around, which has been really great because I firstly haven't had to navigate my way around and could just kind of settle in nicely and it's been really nice to have some company to see things and explain a bit. From tomorrow (Tuesday) I'm on my own to see the city, which is also good because it'll give me some independence to really see a lot of stuff without boring her by my tourist-y ways! :P

I'll post more impressions and thoughts of San Francisco when I've seen more of the city, this is just a first impression, and all good Austenians (Austenites?) know that first impressions can be so wrong, just like we know that all men with a good income are looking for a wife. ;o) So far all I've seen is Carmen's place (nice!), the Bay Bridge (just a big concrete bridge, but good views, from what I could see from the car), Union Square (huge billboard of David Beckham's abs - it's HUGE and his abs look very delicious), Chinatown (rather like Chinatown in Sydney, you know, they're always kind of the same) and Berkeley (not as hippy as I thought it'd be, kind of small with a few hippies strolling around. Not more hippy than the South and Central Coast in Australia can get). Plus we went to an Italian "festival" in North Beach, which was ok, just a lot of stalls selling stuff (mostly not Italian weirdly enough) and some not particularly good bands playing on the grass. The food was all just fried stuff (not a food festival *sad*) so Carmen and I I got some very greasy garlic fries (good but a handful was ENOUGH) and deep friend calimari with lime to share. And it was nice and relaxing and not too tourist-y (with the main tourist element being ME because I took a few photos, which I'll put up on Facebook eventually, but I can't upload my photos because I forgot a cable so I need a computer with an SD slot - mine's waiting for me in China so you might not get photos until September).

Edit
I completely forgot but yesterday I also went to a kind of look out near Carmen's place and we saw all these hang gliders. It looks like so much fun, I think I might try and take a lesson. It's a bit pricey but you get to fly like a bird!