California Dreaming

The road trip part of our USA travels has begun, we are now in Utah after visiting Vegas and the Grand Canyon but I’ll leave that for the next blog. I started writing this on the way to San Diego, so the next issue may be a while!

After our stop offs at Seattle and Portland, the next stop was San Francisco. We had a 21 hour bus journey from Portland to Seattle, which suprisingly wasn’t too bad, apart from a 5 hour stop at 2am in Sacramento. For the price we couldn’t really complain and it saved splashing out on a hotel for a night… every little helps when you’re on a budget!

I loved San Fran. I don’t want to make a hasty decision but it may just have made it to the top of my favorite city list…. For now! (Vancouver is now second FYI!). In the three days we were there we walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, visited Alcatraz, went to the Golden Gate park, spent time at Fishermans Wharf, went to a baseball game for a bargain of £4 each and saw the house of a childhood hero of mine – Mrs Doubtfire!

Alcatraz in the distance

San Francisco

Golden Gate Bridge

Sunset at Fishermans Wharf

Fishermans Wharf

Alcatraz

San Fran skyline from the boat

In the hole

San Fran Giants vs San Diego Padres

First baseball game

Mrs Doubtfire’s House

So the USA Journey Begins…. First Stops Seattle & Portland!

‘We’re not interested in the travelling/backpacking thing’ said Laura and Kyle a mere 7 months ago… We are now owners of backpacks and I’m currently sat writing this from a hostel about to travel for another 6 months-ish! Ah, how things change!

Our first stop was/is Seattle, where I am currently writing this where I started writing this (We are now on a 21 hour bus journey to San Fran, but I’ll get to that!) We had planned to take a trip to Seattle whilst we were in Whistler but never got around to it. So, Seattle was always going to be our first stop after Vancouver plus it made sense logistically.

We made a decision to not visit Vancouver Island (on this trip) as the weather wasn’t looking great and it’s best to go in summer to take advantage of the beaches and activities. So the day after deciding this we headed to Seattle. With it being a very last minute decision, our choice of affordable accommodation was slim pickings. We found a hostel, The Green Tortoise for $38 a nights in a great location, we couldn’t pass this up.

I’ve been somewhat of a sceptic of staying in hostels but we were both surprised how good it was. The free tacos been served an hour after arriving definitely swayed us! The rooms were pretty good, although we couldn’t get in the same room due to booking the previous day and the bathrooms for a hostel were great. Highly recommended. We even bumped into some people we knew from Whistler!

Seattle was good, we saw the main things we wanted to – The Fishermans Market, The first Starbucks and The Spaceneedle.  The Fishermans Market, as become a tourist attraction (Google – Seattle Fish Market videos), so that was really cool to see. Although there wasn’t quite as much fish throwing as seen on the video. The Space Needle was also cool to see, albeit from a distance and the ground.

We met up with a fellow travel blogger who lives in Seattle, Kimberely from On This Trail. It was great to meet someone from the blogging world and even better a local who could show us some of the sports not all tourists would get to see.

 

The famous fish throwing market

Thanks for showing us this spot Kimberly!

Where did I park my boat?!

The Space Needle at night