I escaped Alcatraz!!

Good evening from San francisco my lovelies,

So we arrived in San fran yesterday afternoon after another long day of travel.
We left Bakersfield in the morning and headed towards the coast, where we went south to Monterey and Carmel.
Monterey is a beautiful seaside town, we walked down the wharf and looked at all the yachts and fishing boats then headed to cannery row which is now mostly a bunch of boutiques and a hotel but was made famous by author john Steinbeck in his novel of the same name. Basically the street used to be lined with sardine canning factories, it's mostly tourist stuff now but it's a very pretty street.
Next we went to Carmel-by-the-sea or just Carmel who h is another sea side town once having clint Eastwood as mayor. It has a big old mission there which we visited and drove down to the pristine beach, one to rival even ours :)
The streets in Carmel mostly don't have names so the houses do instead so you apparently send mail to the house name, or if it doesn't have one you just write a description. Not volunteering to be the postie in Carmel anytime soon.
Finally we headed north for San fran. We arrived in the afternoon just in time to see the golden gate bridge at sunset before heading to fishermans wharf for dinner. They're famous for clam chowder here, I didn't have any though (coz clams have feelings too :)) I did take a photo of someone elses though.
The hostel here is lovely, it's an old boutique hotel that's ben newly refurbished so it's very pretty, it even has an old school elevator the type you have the slide across grate on and you can see the floors slide by.
It's in a neighbourhood called tenderloin which has alot of homeless people in it so it's not a great area at night but there are some great restaurants within the neighbouring streets. As for activities today we went to Alcatraz which is being slowly overhauled as it's been taken over by the national parks service now, still fascinating for so many reasons though.
The we took the old street cars all the way across town to haight-ashbury, home of the hippy movement here in the late 60's and now is somewhat eclectic. There's even an interesting punk bar there called Molotov but I'm not sure I'll have time to check it out. Oh I almost forgot, this morning we also went to lombard st which is the steep windy street used in movies, the painted ladies (think full house opening credits) town hall, which looks like the roman basillica and Castro which is like oxford st made into a whole suburb.
Very busy :) so now I am going to crash but more crammed adventures to come before I head home next week. Not long now, miss you all!
Xxx