Day 6 - September 11th - Ding Ding!!

Emma - We all got up nice and early and availed of the free breakfast again, smuggled into our room! We walked downtown and saw a homeless man in a wheelchair chase a female cyclist with a sweeping brush!! He had shouted something at her and whistled so she retaliated by showing him her middle finger! She had stopped for the red light but went right through it when she saw him coming after her!! Then Ian stepped on a huge white egg that was randomly lying in the middle of the pavement. The egg went all over his shoes and went on Sophie's flip flop too. Sophie saved the day with her baby wipes though!! As we walked further downtown, we saw a few more eggs... maybe there's a secret bird that goes around laying its eggs on the streets on San Francisco waiting for unsuspecting Irish tourists to step into them and then laughs heartily from it's perch!!

We got dowtown and went to the Apple store to "borrow" their wireless for a while! Then we went to the Tourist Information Centre to see what we should do. I was dying to go on the San Franciscan cable cars or trollies so we all bought a day pass. The others couldn't really understand that I didnt have any destination in mind to go to on the trollies - I just wanted to ride around aimlessly on them for the whole day!! It's a cool way to see all the backstreets of San Fran and go up and down the huge hills without murdering your calves!! The first trolley we went on happened to go to Lombard St where they have a street a block long, going down hill called the "Crookedest Street" because it goes diagonally from one side of the street to the other a number of times before the end of the street.

The trolleys were great fun because you can stand at and hang off the sides of them for your whole journey! You also get to be right beside the driver and see how he pulls the huge levers and stands on, putting his whole weight on, the breaks. It is a bit scary hanging off the side when another trolley comes in the other direction and you have to suck all your bits in and also when you're going up or down the hugely steep hills! I think the others were getting a bit sick of me though coz I made them go around the city on the things all day long!!

Graham and Sophie hanging off the side:

We eventually decided that we were all freezing so we went to get dinner in the Cheesecake Factory, a famous American restaurant that has lovely food and you've guessed it - delicious cheesecake!! After dinner, we went back to the hotel for a few drinks and a game or two of cards!