Saaan Fraaancisco

Ever since I can remember we have been recieving christmas cards from the US. Distant relatives that my parents have stayed in touch with who we suddenly had the opportunity to visit! Our first stop was Roger Bates, a relative on my mother's side, who lives outside San Francisco. We jumped on a Greyhound bus in LA and drove 8 hours north. We've heard a lot about the Greyhounds but were rather pleasantly surprised - we have been on A LOT worse bus rides! In the city we jumped on the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit, a lot of fun since "bart" means moustache in Norwegian. "Bart police"!? Haha) and went to Pleasanton were Roger picked us up.

Vener and Roger live in a really cosy house with their chinese crested powder puff Sydney and their cat Oliver. We appreciated the animal company, we miss that travelling. It was a nice neighbourhood and Pleasanton was such a pretty little town! Altough we spent most of our time exploring San Francisco Roger and Vener showed us around their area too. They took us to the mall, downtown and out to eat both Mexican and pizza. Yum! Roger has a pool table in the garage and showed us that he has absolutely not forgotten his skills, I lost 10 times in a row.. We also watched a lot of old, classic TV series and some new. We're excited about watching American shows on American TV! All things American in general really, we keep seeing things we've only even seen on Friends or other shows!

Out to eat Mexican!

Vener, Sydney and Oliver. The cat and dog were just about the same size!

It takes about an hour to get to San Francisco downtown from there, Roger dropped us off and picked us up at the BART station both early and late. We are so grateful! The city was a lot like I had imagined, hilly and beautiful. There was a big farmers market in town on Saturday with fruits, vegetables and other food. And soo many samples! We pretty much had lunch right there. We made our way through China Town (like jumping right back to Asia for a couple of hours) and over to the Fishermans Wharf. A touristy but nice area with lots of life and things to see. You can also see the Golden Gate Bridge from there, the real landmark of San Francisco!

The Golden Gate Bridge is in the background!

San Fransisco!

China town! ;)

And YES, the streets are really steep. As proven by the gold fish tank!

We went by Ghiradelli Square, one of the most famous American chocolate factories. They gave out free samples and we ended up dropping by there several times during our stay. Mm. We also went on a factory tour of a new chocolate company called TCHO. We learned a lot of new things about chocolate and enjoyed the tasting part very much! First tuesday of the month a bunch of museum have free entry so we decided to be a little cultural. The Museum of Modern Art was fun with a very diverse collection. These are some of our favorites:

One is made in chocolate, the other is soap. The seductive/tempting vs the innocent/clean sides of women.

Another thing this city is knows for are the cable cars. Apparently it's the last functioning system in the worldof that size and we got a good inlook into how it works at the Cable Car Museum. We had to go on one too, of cource. We got the last two spaces on our car and were hanging off the sides. Up and down steep hills, scary when you meet other cable cars not even a foot away! We held on real tight and enjoyed the ride! We have visited several Norwegian Sea men's churches on our trip. San Fran was up next! It has a beautiful location on the steep Hyde Street overlooking the wharf and the Golden Gate Bridge. The waffles and coffee were well worth the climb!

The cable car system. Impressive!

Excited about cable cars!

Veiw from the sea men's church on Hyde St.

Ever since we arrived here Sanna has been singing a song about the city and the only line she knows goes like this "Saaan Fraaansisco". Argh. We love the city and have been taken great care of, but maybe it's time to move on!? ;) Denver, here we come!