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.