This morning was difficult. James and I woke almost simultaneously this morning after a very good night's sleep, most definitely helped by the alcohol consumption of last night. The alcohol also assisted one other thing which was our hangovers. Basically Caz and Caroline (our 'roomies') offered to get us our beers (due to certain silly restrictions here we can't get a drink) and despite only buying three to start with (a chilled Saturday night) we all ended up getting hammered.

We headed over to the other USA hostel on Sutter and met up with a load of people in the basement including Ben & Neil (Doncaster), Debbie (High Wycombe), Neil (only bloody Carricktoole - just up the road from Ballycotton in Cork), Paul (Edgbaston) and Tim (Australia). Despite being in San Fran, we havn't actually done any socialising with Americans.

It was a good laugh, the 'Hawaiian Punch' was flowing and there was some drinking games and fussball going on too until the early hours. A good night.

So this morning we gathered up our stuff, left a note for the girls and headed back over to the Commodore (where we are staying for a second night) after some breakfast. James once again managed to make his pancake look like roadkill, but it filled a gap and the coffee helped clear our head. We bumped into a scouse couple as we washed up who were friendly and gave some advice about Vegas and the Strip. There had been a large amount of destination-info swapping last night, although that is fairly hard to recall.

Another cable car ride from the main terminal and we arrived at Pier 41 just in time to catch the ferry to Alcatraz. I was having trouble focusing (not entirely sure why) so we got a hotdog and some liquids inside and by the time we got to the island I was fine.

Alcatraz is a fantastically brooding monstrosity and the audio tour is very comprehensive. The main highlights included Al Capone's cell although one of my personal favourites was the exhibition called Prisoners of Age exhibit which consisted of about 30 or so large (well designed) banners with some stunning portrait photos of convicted murderers, traffickers and kidnappers with personal accounts of the incidents. A five or six year kid next to me read one of them out loud "Sex Crimes" and turned to his mum asking what "Sex" is? Amusing.

The island was fascinating and I took quite a good number of photos. When we finished we headed back to the dock and picked up shrimp and chips for food. On the way back there was a visit to the cable car museum which had the added surprise of being the cable house as well so we watched endless loops of cable being recycled around the city.

Tomorrow we are off to Yosemite and the likes. Organised travelling here we come...

We got two new room mates last night - two (hot) girls from south London. We don't know too much about them as we had already gone to bed before they arrived. James slept badly, but I was ok. By the time we got up everyone else had gone, but it was still only 8am (ish).

We decided to do a foot tour today through Chinatown. Lack of take-up had meant there was no guided tour, but we set off and managed a good few miles more on yesterday. That isn't to say my legs weren't killing me after the shock to my muscles yesterday, but it gave us to get a better idea of the city. We dad as the Americans do and took coffee on the payment in little Italy - James became part of some passing tour making conversation with the thirty or so tourists peering through the window of our coffee shop. After we headed up the hill to the Coit Tower which is a white by Lord of the Rings-esque structure at the highest point in the city. Good views was followed by a scenic descent back down the steep face of the rock through some fantastically well groomed gardens and into the North Beach area.

Absolutely craving food by this point we went to Pier 39 and grabbed burgers at a little cafe. By this time we were feeling fairly well-exercised but carried on along the sea front via some old maritime sights - steam boats/ferries/WW2 Submarines and the like, finalised with a visit to the free maritime museum.

After all this we just sat overlooking the bay and sunned ourselves until we'd had enough and headed back to the tram stop. Despite thinking an early get-away would be beneficial by avoiding the queue we had encountered yesterday we were bitterly disappointed to find the queue was twice as long. I was even more bitterly disappointed to be heckled by what happened to be a friendly stall keeper as I walked past "Hey, young lady, young lady... young man!" . Turns out that my bag was open and he was just being nice (we were ignoring him to start with as we thought he was trying to flog something). Anyway, being compared to a girl amused James a lot, but I found rather annoying.

As we waited in the queue today we listened in part to a blues sax player and in part to a group of US girls exchanging in a traditional American "Oh my God!" conversation.

About two hours later we finally got aboard a tram and even this journey was disturbed by filming of something or other and the cameramen got the tram to go back and forth for a few minutes to get the right of of us all waving and pulling faces through the windows.

Once past Union Square we got off and took a little walk along one of the bigger streets. America is a vibrant country and we were pleased to find some traditional violence kick off right next to us as we walked the street. Aluminium fold away chairs flew, trestle tables were hurled through the air and blows were exchanged in a plume of chess pieces as two old guys who had previously been engaged in a roadside chess game engaged themselves in full scale pavement war. Awesome. It provided much entertainment for the passers by and I never expected to see such a full on confrontation over a game of chess. As we walked back past the scene five minutes later they (and their possies) were clearing up the debris of the fallout.

Back in the hostel now we are going to grab some food in a minute. Think it's going to be a themed 50s diner around the corner. We are both dying for an elusive beer.

Probably using a nickname which the locals totally disapprove of, James and I have arrived in San Francisco. It's been pretty cool so far, jet lag hasn't quite set in and our flight was OK as they didn't decide to plant any screaming kids near us.

Our taxi from the airport was driving by Ray, who reminded me of Ray Charles, which really as comparisons go, he shouldn't be driving anything. We arrived late afternoon at the Commodore where our tour will leave on Monday. They couldn't supply us with a room on Sunday so we stayed our first night and will be staying Sunday night there but we are now residing in a usahostel around the corner. We are sharing with two Germans whom we haven't met yet, but that adds to the excitement.

We thought an early start would be good and got ourselves down to Union Square by about 8am. We caught one of those famous street trams down to Fisherman's Wharf and booked our boat trip to Alcatraz for Sunday as all the tickets for today had gone (we were told if we got there early enough we could get one of the unreserved tickets). Once this was done we grabbed breakfast at some cheap cafe - a heavily grease impregnated burrito) before hiring bikes to go on a day trip around the coast. 16 miles later and we had gone over the golden gate bridge (spectacular), visited a civil war fort (think Fort Boyard without the breasts) and seen some pretty impressive houses.

People seem to be friendlier than I remember from Seattle a couple of years ago, however there was a bit of a push to get on the less-than-hourly ferry with it's bike limit of 25 and a queue of well over 50.

After getting back we wondered about the wharf a while longer before getting into a queue for a tram home. Unfortunately there was some delay and we ended up hanging around for ages. There was some entertainment provided, but most of the amusement provided since we got here has been the sound/look of other English people making themselves obvious tourists. James and I have bothe become paranoid about using the words "Cheers", "Mate" and "Ta".

Some other things of interest were that we have found that they are phasing out SubClub tickets over here, so using the standard law of physics - "Everything they get in the US we get sooner or later" means that you need to start cashing in on your free subs when you can. This is a public service announcement.

Also there was a fantastic excuse for a street performer working by the docks today. All his was doing was crouching on the pavement clutching a load of branches and posing as a bush, then jumping out on unsuspecting passers by. Amusing, but really just an excuse to scare the crap out of Chinese people.

James found a store which I was immediately warey of. Anywhere that uses that genuine old-style version of the word Shoppe is clearly worth avoiding and indeed it was. We left fairly quickly and found ourselves watching the resident sea lions on the other side of the pier. All good.

Apart from the fact that today has marked the most exercise I have probably done since I left school it has also been quite entertaining. I think there is some national obligation for everyone around here to jog (there are bloody millions of them) and federal law that they own an iPod.

Looking forward to a tour of the city tomorrow, assuming it goes ahead - we need another three people to sign up.

For anyone interested we are 9 hours behind and the movie on the plane Monster in Law was mediocre.

Hectic would be out by vast proportions. Today can simply be summed up as go-go-go! I've placed two print orders and still have one to go - 7500 different articles in total - that's a lot of printing. I'm just relieved it is so close to over.

I still have to pack, and considering this time tomorrow I'm going to be mid-Atlantic the words 'skin' and 'of my teeth' spring to mind.

The parents have decided to treat us to a Chinese tonight (fantastic) and then the ball gets rolling for departure. James is going to turn up at some god-forsaken hour of the morning and we will then depart for Heathrow. Usually we would have gone to and from Birmingham, but this year we decided to try somewhere a little more 'exotic', opting to drive all the way down south to catch the flight. Thank god it's not with BA.

I also need to venture into town to pick up some last minute provisions, but I wouldn't be surprised if I totally forget something critical as up until this point I haven't really had a chance to concentrate on holiday yet. Any chance of getting a haircut has already passed as it's now mid/late afternoon, and there is no way I've got time for that sort of luxury.

I've still got letters to post, tents to return and invoices to deliver, but at least it is all within a stones throw. I don't know how often I am going to be able to blog while I am away. I will try to keep it regularly done - after all - the whole point of this in the first place was that I could write about my travels.

So if I don't get a chance to speak to anyone reading this before I go... I'll catch you in a few days from the other side of the big pond.

It's 1am. I wrote a nice big entry tonight, then the browser screwed up and naturally I am well annoyed.

In protest/tiredness I am not even going to attempt to do any sort of salvage at this time of night.

Roll on sunny California.

I woke this morning deciding to make immediate progress - the computer went straight on. I was rather disappointed to find that my internet wasn't working and after some careful thinking (required in order to operate correctly at this time of the morning) I realised the root of the problem was the vacuum sound from downstairs. The man who had come to shampoo the sofa had unplugged everything in order to plug in his industrial washing kit. I explained the situation managed to coax him into switching sockets before being pinned between the standard lamp, his vacuum and my route of escape as he managed to fix me in a conversation (talking at me not with me) about how his son was very good on computers, but he wasn't. I don't know if it's just me, but I always seem to get hit with the same approach from anyone over the age of thirty five with that particular statement. If they don't exactly understand what I said the first time (and I try to be simple) they will often tell me about one of their young relations who does know about 'That sort of thing'. I am not entirely sure what they are expecting me to do; maybe to phone them up so I can discuss it, or thinking that because they own a computer too I might know them.

As soon as I was back up on the net I dealt with the frighteningly little amount of correspondence in my inbox - this broods badly. Does this mean I'm in for a whopping great pile of stuff the day before I fly? I hope not.

I worked on DDS and my website, and I'm quite pleased. I'm not going to put a link up yet, DDS hasn't seen it yet, but as soon as there is some progress and our order from the States comes though I will be a little less vague about the whole thing.

I've still got to come up with a watertight idea for a major project yet. This is getting critical.

I also spoke to cousin Nick today. Nick is my youngest Canadian cousin; he's 30 next week, and is still living in Taiwan where James and I visited him last year. Some days I pine to be back out there. I can't believe it has been a whole year. Mountains and beaches at sunrise (see the photo at the top of the page), Chinese food for every meal, Mandarin, fantastic technology and just shear beauty in a mystical country. Anything to go back one day.

To try and cut down on the massive pile of rubbish that I has amassed on the floor of my room in the past two months, I decided to tackle it head on today. Not particularly exciting, but it's the truth.

I also had some positive news from DDS regarding our enterprise, replied to a few emails and designed and built a mailing list system that had been driving me to despair for weeks.

I'm a little concerned about the amount of work I'm going to have to execute in the next few days due to the week being terminated early (on Thursday) with flying to the US and all that malarkey.

This means there is a massive push to get things through before this deadline. I've got a large number of print items to see to, plus I'm quite keen on getting the finer points of Tongy's admin system cleared up as he's found he needs a bit more functionality that I originally included.

Onward...