Seattle

On arrival in Seattle, I managed to get myself and two old Russian ladies locked in a stairwell. Luckily we were rescued after a while by a woman who heard us banging on the door.

I have rather taken against a city in whose main station it is so easy to get trapped... but I have only just arrived; I expect things can only get better.

San Francisco III

Today I took a boat across the bay to a state nature reserve called Angel Island which is another former army base, as well as "the Ellis Island of the west" and an internment camp for Japanese Americans during the war.
It was incredibly creepy, old abandoned buildings and no one about for miles around.

San Francisco II

One really nice thing about America is the street life. Possibly this has something to do with the climate, which encourages people to spend time outdoors with their fellow citizens. Two examples:

In Denver, and again in San Francisco, I saw public chess boards, at which crowds of (apparent) strangers gathered to play each other!

And this morning I saw this group of elderly Chinese women (there was a similar group of men on the other side of the park) doing some kind of co-ordinated dancing (Chinese line dancing?) in the Italian quarter. They seemed unselfconscious in the face of a number of curious photographers.

San Francisco

I was lucky enough to enjoy the best tour imaginable of San Francisco yesterday - on the back of an ancient Vespa! We went right up to the twin peaks for the most fantastic views of the city and the bay, then through Haight-Ashbury (centre of the 1960s hippy revolution) and out to the Presidio - a former army base to defend the Golden Gate Bridge which is now a public park.

It also happens to be Navy week, which means the skies are full of Blue Angels (the equivalent of our Red Arrows) and other stunt planes roaring about and making the good people of California wonder if this is how it feels in Afghanistan...

Santa Cruz IV - an unfortunate accident

Ho ho, this is very silly but it might make you laugh...

Those of you who are friends of 6 Rochester Road will remember that Peter was unfortunate enough to have a strange accident when he was in Santa Cruz - and by terrible co-incidence, during my trip I suffered the same fate! Fortunately my head has now been re-attached to my body, enabling me to resume blogging.

Santa Cruz III - the tree house

My other treat yesterday was a tour of Ned's tree house and grotto. The photos don't need much explaining, it was incredibly beautiful, everything cobbled together from thrift stores and other people's rubbish. To wonderful effect.

Santa Cruz II - the beach

I couldn't help writing to gloat that yesterday I swam in the Pacific. Everyone said it would be too cold. I was even told stories about how my grandpa (a hardened sea swimmer, who has swum north of the arctic circle) threw up after swimming near San Francisco. But it was glorious. There is no other word for it.

(To be fair, it's a lot warmer in Monterrey Bay than it is in the open sea off San Francisco).