San Francisco -
USA from coast to coast

Wednesday, August 2'nd

We took a long weekend and drove to San Francisco, taking the Pacific Highway. On the way you pass the Danish town of Solvang, so we took an

“This place is looking like the clifs at the nighttime scene in the beginning of Polanskis '74 flic; » Chinatown « ..

exit to highway 246 and had to make a stop to order a "Spandauer", and a "Borgmester stang" but unfortunately we couldn't get any so we settled for some pancakes at "Paula's Pancake House". The town itself does not resemble a typical Danish town of today, it is more like an image from a H.C. Andersen fairytale. I bought myself a T-Shirt with "Solvang" in large letters, my office at that time was on a street named just that; »Solvang« - it is bound to start some questions and stories to be told.

On the way back to Highway 1 we fueled the car and drove on, the Pacific Highway slowly got close to the ocean again and moist in form of clouds was formimg at the rim. The wind was blowing in from the Pacific, pushing the newborn clouds up the rim and inland. It was strange to drive through, only a hundred feet above the clouds vanished again. At a spot with a parking lot we made a stop to dip our toes in the Pacific. This place is looking like the clifs at the nighttime scene in the beginning of Polanskis '74 flic; » Chinatown «, but it could be shot anywhere along the shore we have travelled by for the past ˝ hour.

A little climb and we were down on the beach, pure white sand and the cold cold water. The waves seemed to have a longer wavelength than the ones back home, must be caused by the bigger ocean at hand. The Pacific isn't good for swiming (not that we had any intension), a few miles out the ocean is deep and the current doesn't give the sun a chance to warm the water. Instead we climbed the rock on the picture. It is important to get a little exercise and not sit in the car the hole day.

Back at the car there was a lot of Chipmunks on the ground, they were rather tame. We had some pistachio nuts in the car and tried to feed the small squirrels. Apparently they are very fond of pistachio, while we were feeding, Shehab was making a wildlife video that even Sir David Attenborough would have been proud of.

It was now time for dinner while we were going through Monterey in the late afternoon. This called for seafood and Rajiv knew just the place, a crowded resturant where they served great fish. Completely stuffed we moved on, the daylight was now too dim for us to enjoy the scenic route here, about ten miles longer than the normal road to San Francisco. When you see a commercial with the car driving on a narrow cliff-road with the water down below, chances are high that it is shot here.

It was close to midnight before we reached our destination. Rajivs bigbrother was working for Atari and lived in Sunnyvale, a part of Silicon Valley and we were welcome to stay for a few days. There was only one lounge bed so Shehab and I played Spoof to settle who should sleep on the floor. Well, I lost..

Thursday, August 3'rd

Up at a modest time, Rajiv had lots of ideas of what to see and we settled on seeing the sites in the city that day; the harbour-area, Golden Gate, Chinatown and whatever we could think of. All the way across the states we had bought postcards and most of them was now written, but where to get stamps? We had tried several postoffices, they were always closed when we looked. "7-11" was the answer, we bought a lot of stamps and spend 10 minutes licking and finally mailing.

Our first stop was the Fishernmans Worf (Pier 39) with all the shops, restaurents and grocery stands. We parked at a multi-storey carpark with a great view to Alcatres from the top. We stroled to the end of the pier and watched the walrus' that have settled there. Apparently they get plenty

At the top floor of Fishernmans Worf was a new shop like a Cyber café without the coffee. While I wrote an Email back home, Shehab and Rajiv had signed us up for a fight in Virtual Reality. This was a rather new thing, none of us had tried it out before, but I must admit that it worked pretty well, inspite of the crude polygon-graphics. The sensation of depth was there and the reactions to movement was fine. We had a good ten minutes blasting eachother into atoms.

Driving westward past the Military Presido we got to the Golden Gate. You only pay in one direction, going into the city. Fairly clever since it is quite cheap and the alternative to drive all around the bay is not even considered. It was not that good a day to see the bridge, clouds was coming in from the Pacific and the top of the bridge-pier was enveloped in mist. Never the less it is a fine construction. We made a stop right at the the other side and walked back on the brifge to the nearest bridge-pier. It is amazing that the steel-bridge have lasted since the early 1900, earthquakes and everything. We drove back and payed the few bucks at the toll.

Now it was time for Lombard street with the crooket road. But just now it was being renovated, hopefully not straightend. The reason was too many tourists getting stuck in the difficult corkscrew road and ruining their car. When parking in the side of the road in San Francisco it is important to turn the

Our last site to see today is Chinatown, probably the the most famous. We parked near the Transamerica building that look like a needle, the second trademark of San Francisco, Chinatown is just a few blocks behind (coming from the bay). This is stepping into another world, all store signs are in Chinese and the atmosphere is Asian. You only hear English spoken if you listen careful, otherwise it is Chinese. The items on sale from the Butcher are odd ones, live toads and other peculiar reptiles, not ones I would like to have for dinner.

On the way back to the car we stop at a donut-shop in the North Beach area. Not that our appetite was evoked by the butcher but this is one of those things that you must try, a coffee and a doughnut, actually I had two - they looked so delicius and they were. This also postponed the need for immediate dinner. Driving back to Sunnyvale we made a stop at the Top of the Town, a vantagepoint with good view of the city. Now it was afternoon and visability was not good, clouds was shrouding the place in a drissel. Try to come up here on a good day.

Back at the house we rested for a couple of hours, showered and searched the net for good restaurants, we had heard that Palo Alto should have a good Sushi-place but we couldn't find it. Instead we located a promising place close to the part of downtown where we had been today, so off we went. Getting back to this area at nighttime revealed this district as a tough neighbourhood and the restaurant didn't even exist anymore (or the address listed was wrong). We had a drink at a sinister-looking bar before we drove to the Hard Rock café to dine. Even though the place was crowded we got a table within ½ an hour and the food

Back at Sunnyvale we checked out the nightlife. Even though it was Thursday there was great partying going on in the nightclubs. We had to identifiy our age to get in, I wonder how old you have to be - 27 seemed to be enough. We partyed on, I volonteered to be the designated driver but all in all we had to be fit the next day. Back at 2AM and now it was my turn to sleep on the bed.

Friday, August 4'th

We started out with breakfast at "Denny's" close by, to discuss the possibilities of what to see in the bay area. I had some french toast and pancakes. Rajivs suggested the forest on the northern side of Golden Gate with its giant pinewood, the Redwood Forest in the Muir Woods. Today there was no haze and the Golden Gate look magnificant in the sunshine. When going to the Redwood Forest, don't do like we did. We parked where we thought the forest were, we walked and walked and suddently found ourelves in an open field. No sign of any nearby wood and had to walk all the way back to the car, drive further on and follow the signs.

So try to park close to the trails, otherwise you have to walk pretty far to see the trees. I guess that we had been hiking 10 miles before the above picture was taken. The trees are so big that they seem to defide nature, I don't know how many people hand in hand, it takes to embrace such an specimen, it measure 15 feet across in the base. And they are tall,

We had dinner at one of the Jazz-clubs in the center of San Francisco, we looked around and ended at a place with a fantastic jazz band playing. We sat in a corner while eating but moved closer to the music afterwards. It was some old folks playing and when they finished, they were picked up by a rest-home-van or so

Saturday, August 5'th

Today we had planned to go to Yosemite, a three-four hours east of San Francisco. So we left early, it is a popular tourist attraction and we left early to get ahead and avoid potential traffic jam. There are two roads to take coming from San Francisco, the new straight highway or the one we took, the old crooket one. It's a bit faster unless your car heat up like ours. It is a lot more fun working the wheel but tough on the engine and on the top we had to make a pitstop, the temperature said 'boiling'.

This was supposed to be a quicker route but with our driving and required stop for fuel and engine-cooling it didn't give us the head start. But traffic was not dense yet and we entered Yosemite around noon. an awsome National Park, with great mountains and waterfalls. We stoped at all the landmarks; El Capitán, a vertical rock half a mile high, ideal for parashuters that is into base-jumping. Yosemite Falls where you can go and have a splash if you have the strength to stand up to the water pressure. We finished our Yosemite stay with the view of the valey from the south-side exit before we headed back to San Francisco.

That night was our last up here in northern California and we stayed at one of the excelent clubs in Silicon Valey, great live music. It was somewhere in Palo Alto

Sunday, August 6'th

We started out late and the trip back to Los Angeles was uneventful, except for this sight; a bunch of Mexicans sitting in their car while it was getting towed. I guess there were six or seven in the car and they looked quite intimidated and perhaps a little ashamed. We managed to get the picture below, how cruel of us.

The rest of the drive back to LA was smooth. We stopped for food and fuel near the "Three Flag" amusement park. The light was getting dim when we were an hour away from Pasadena and we turned on the headlights. We remembered a warning we had heard, not to flash at