We are up late again, well later than we planned at 0900 and once we´re packed we bid our farewells for a few days and take ourselves into San Francisco. We were trying really hard yesterday to sort out CSing but without success so we resorted to booking a room through “airbnb” (you can get it at home in UK and Europe too), it´s a bit like CSing in as much as you create a profile and leave reviews for each other but there is a cost, that of what you´d expect to pay in a bnb except there´s rarely brekkie involved, and it´s nowhere near as socially interactive as CSing.

Angie drops us at the train station and thanks to trusty Google maps we are able to manoeuvre our way through the public transport system to get to the bnb, which is actually in Oakland on the outskirts of San Francisco but we hear that its up and coming, has a bit of an art scene going on and it´s easy to get to Downtown from there.

On the last train on the way we get talking to a guy, Michael, who overheard us checking which train to get and more importantly trying to figure out how to use the ticket machines here – it’s the most convoluted routine you could imagine! He lives near the road that the bnb is on so he walks with us and gives us lots of tips on the way of where to eat, where to drink, and what´s worth seeing in Oakland. He even tells us about an art walk that’s on on Friday night, it´s called “The Art Murmur” and he reckons it´s definitely worth a look… maybe we´ll need to stay at the bnb another night, we´re booked in for 2 currently…

Our host, Claudia, is lovely she´s originally for Leeds (small world, that’s close to Dan and Angie´s roots) and the room is lovely. They have spent the last umpteen years restoring the house and they´ve made a great job of it. They live on the ground floor and the top two floors are their business, with a communal bathroom on each floor and a kitchen with a nicely stocked fridge solely for guests to help themselves… so in effect breakfast is included here.

We get word through that we have been offered a couch for Saturday and Sunday nights in Downtown San Francisco. It´s a start and it´ll give us a chance to get 1st hand knowledge of town. The offer is from a couple, April and Tim, who are about to start a long trip, so there should be lots of common ground 🙂

We are pretty tired after all the traveling to get here and decide to skip going into town tonight – there´s a CSing social event on, much like the one in LA we went to – it´s our wedding anniversary afterall and we just want to go somewhere nice for dinner and chill.

Our choice of food is a short walk away and seems reasonable and very popular, but it´s not long before Bernice needs to go to the loo once we´re back in our room and yep you guessed it, the food doesn´t agree with her. Bonkers really, all that time travelling in South and Central America, and only one bout of food issues which were actually her own fault as she basically ate raw chicken, and now we´re here in the USofA less than a month and it happens again. Boo Hiss!