Final Days in San Francisco

Last Call for San Francisco
 
*knock*, *knock* the door resounded, waking us both up with a start at what must be some unGodly hour of the morning. Yawn!! We had spent last night out on the town, at a place called the 'Biscuit & Blues' club. There you get the chance to savour some fine food, a few drinks and hear some smooth blues. They finished their set with a rendition of 'When the Saints Come Marching in', with a shout out to Grossman's Tavern in Toronto. This generated a New Orleans style Congo line, which was getting pretty long towards the end of the song. The rest of the night involved a fair amount of coffee and staying up really late watching 'Lost in Translation' (We were taking notes for the Tokyo leg of our journey).
 
We were staying at the Prescott Hotel, which was quite a step up from Hostel living. On the previous night we decided to arrange for some room service in the morning, from Wolfgang Puck, the renowned chef. Suddenly this all came back to us lying there half awake in the dark, with someone hammering at the door - surely it couldn't be 10 am already? Unfortunately it was and bleary eyed, the door was opened to a patient, smiling waiter, who proudly revealed the Puck'sters gastronomic treat. It sounded a lot better on the menu than it actually was: a few pieces of fruit and some yoghurt - bon appetite!
 
Colin was way too tired to head out to the Mission district, so he left that up to Melissa to explore on her own. She went and did some shopping at Macy's and brought back a Burrito as big as her arm! San Francisco has some really great Mexican food.
 
Colin, on the other hand, when he did eventually get up, was keen to go and visit Alcatraz. Melissa had seen this before and would give it a miss this time - way too touristy for her.
 
Off Colin went to visit prison or so he thought. Unfortunately he had not committed a worthy enough crime to be relegated to the 'Rock'. It turned out that you need to have booked many weeks in advance before you have the pleasure of being sentenced to that fait.  So no prison visits for him, but in theme of doing something touristy, Colin went for a ride on a cable car. This was heaps of fun and it took him right down into the veritable heart of tourist land - Fisherman's Wharf! This place was like a giant ant hill: swarming with people from all over the world, wandering around in their San Francisco sweaters, happily eating clam chowder in bread that was carved into a bowl. It was good fun and Colin could at least see a little bit of Alcatraz (from a far away, across the water). Plus, checkout the pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge which has at last shown us it's true colours!
 
After milling around there for a while, Colin met up with Melissa at 'Pacific Catch' restaurant, which is a dubious 'tourist spot' for the iPhone geeks. This is the place that appears in the iPhone Calamari ad: 'Did somebody say Seafood?' Melissa insisted while we were eating there, that Colin was not allowed to pull out his iPhone during the meal - that would be way too geeky.
 
We finished off the night by walking down Chestnut Street and watching the Simpson's movie, in the world's smallest cinema. This turned out to be, like you know like, really cool, dude! Sorry, I couldn't resist practicing some 'Nor Cal' Speak.
 
The next day we spent mostly in preparation for leaving tomorrow - we went through our entire luggage and culled a few things to hopefully meet the weight limit. A last trip around San Francisco had us visiting the Painted Ladies and wandering around the worlds most crooked street - actually let me rephrase that: The worlds, second most crooked street, or actually that's not right either. Ok, let's call it the second most crooked street in San Francisco, there...
 
Tomorrow we will leave Canada, the US and everything that we know behind us - we are venturing across the ocean to Tokyo Japan, were we will no doubt be lost in translation (among other things).
 
ps: That's if we make the interconnecting flight!
 
pps: When you are traveling over the international date line, leaving at 3pm in a Westerly direction and you arrive at 5pm the next day, will the sun ever set during a ten hour trip?!