Day 1: Arrival in San Francisco and a little shopping.

We arrived in SFO airport after a fairly turbulent trip. I didn’t sleep at all on the plane thanks to the awesome on board entertainment –stacks of new movies, TV shows and CD’s to listen to. Lou had a little sleep i think. Customs was fine and quick apart from the little freak out we had when we read that we had to declare ‘all food items’ because Lou decided she couldn’t go without Vegemite for 3 weeks and had brought some with her.

Hotel was fine, nice and clean, free wireless etc. We were both really tired but decided to go for a walk down to Union Square straight after unpacking. Union square specifically refers to a little park thing –very similar to Federation Square and not that exciting. However, people generally refer to Union Square as a collection of 6 big blocks or so full of nice shops which was a bit confusing at first. Some that come to mind are Macy’s, Apple Store (the flagship one), Nordstrom, FCUK, Virgin megastore etc. When Lou learned of this she was very excited indeed.

For dinner we went to an All American Diner thing where the waitress was called Mrs Louisiana Somethingorother. I had a ‘broiled’ hamburger thing and Lou had something similar. Halfway through our meal, and to my shock, I read on the wall “US Surgeon Generals Warning: Food products used in this establishment have been shown to cause birth defects and/or cancer”. We didn’t order desert. Later on we found that sign commonly around the place, especially on the pervasive Hot Dog stands on every corner.

Everywhere you go there is free wifi, so it looks like we can post and check emails fairly frequently while having breakfast etc.