Saturday, September 30, 2017

San Salvador

A long and very uncomfortable flight from San Francisco to El Savadore. A stop in LA before embarking for El Salvador at midnight, arriving at 6.00am - no sleep!

A tour of San Salvadore happened after we had checked into the hotel Sal y Luz and had had breakfast. It feels very safe here. The people are happy and seem to have purpose.

The area is very earthquake prone and a huge amount of damage remains from the last serious quake. Renovations are also happening everywhere. There are different sectors of the city, from very oppulent and expensive suburbs to very poor buerros.

The city centre revolves around a central plaza with two amazing churches, one looks like a bunker from the outside, but inside is a tribute to the arts and local artists.

A trip to the vocano Boccaque (sp?) was lovely - cool and up through a cloud forest.

How is the Spanish going? Not brilliantly, we are hoping this is due to the lack of sleep! Our guide, Benjamin is very kind, speaks perfect English and is helping us with pronunciation and some colloquial expressions. This morning in the hotel, we managed much better and were mostly understood.




Wednesday, September 27, 2017

California Day 3

Yosemite National Park proved to be too difficult to get to, Alcatraz was fully booked until 2 October. Our nexr choice, a trip to Muir Woods and Sausalito, with return ferry ride, was a great other option. We have walked and walked and walked.
The redwoods are very majestic. It was so nice to be out of the city for the first half of the day!
The ferry docked at pier 43 just east of Fishermans Wharf. The tour guide had highly recommended the crab food stall in Fishermans Ghetto, we looked but did not partake because we had already had some of the famous local clam chowder in Sausalito earlier in the day.
Cocktails again at the local bar, where we met Donna, who has a daughter living in Melbourne and who insisted on buying us a drink.
Dinner tonight was exceptional at a local Burmese restaurant, yum! We need to be able to emulate the vegetarian tofu dish! It was made from a type of dry tofu. (Wonder if it's available in Melbourne?) with shrimp paste, chillies, red peppers, Thai basil, crushed peanuts, loads of garlic and a touch of lime juice.



Tuesday, September 26, 2017

San Francisco day 2

Late start today. Lunch was had at a local halal Indian/Pakistani cafe, where the proprietor was in awe of Dennis Lillee, Geoff Thomson, the Chappell brothers, Alan Border etc.
The BART rail system is excellent and we are just a few stops to the centre of town and the wharf areas. We visted the old port area this day, as the day before we had had a tour of the major tourist sites via the Big Red Bus. (Union Square; Fishermans Wharf; Golden Gate Park; Golden Gate Bridge; museums, opera house, symphony centre etc) The old port has been fully restored and houses major US business headquarters and a local produce market.
We met up one of our friendly locals, Charles at the bar just around the corner.

San Francisco

Sometimes you get lucky in life and manage to get two days out of one! We left Sydney on Monday 24 September at 11:00am and arrived in San Franciso 24 at 7:30am of the same day having flown for some thirteen plus hours. This gave us a whole day of sightseeing.
An orientation tourist bus around the main attractions gave us a sense of where the most iconic landmarks are. This dill has just deleted the best photos😬.
Wonderful opera and symphonies to be enjoyed at this time of the year. The symphony orchestra and visiting musicians play in an amazing building designed to look like a piano keyboard.
Yes, we did visit Fishermans Warf, which was overrun by tourists from two cruise liners as was the famous cable tram.
We are staying in an airbnb in Mission. Our first impressions of the area were not favourable. As we exited the BART station, many homeless people and filthy streets greeted us. It smelled of human excrement and buildings and houses covered in graffiti and locked grills. We left our luggage at the airbnb for our sightseeing tour and managed to negotiate the automatic ticketing system and train lines.
Last night we went out to find that this part of town comes alive at night! People everywhere enjoying themselves in the many bars and restaurants that were now open, clean and welcoming. We had dinner in a Mexican restaurant with delicious marguiritas. It was too early to go to bed so we opted for a nightcap at a local bar. Here we met Rudy and Charles and Ian and Jeff (no not gays) who insisted on buying us a drink. They were fun, very friendly and not enamoured by their current political situation; very eager to discuss politics here and outside of USA.

Sunday, September 24, 2017

Beginning our trip

Chaos at Sydney airport this morning. The radar for the control tower isn't working, so there are major delays instead of moving 90 aircraft an hour only 15 are moving per hour. Fortunately we have access to the Air New Zealand lounge, so breakfast in style.

Thursday, September 7, 2017

World Trip

Leaving Sunday 24 September