Friday 22 February 2008 Day 185 Hotel Rex, San Francisco

We catch a cable car up the hill, squashing ourselves in as it’s pretty busy and they make all the tourists stand/sit inside rather than on the platform outside. Get off at Fishermans Wharf and get some good views of the Golden Gate Bridge. We walk down the front to the very touristy Pier 39, before catching a taxi back to Union Square, chatting to the very nice driver on the way. Have lunch in the food court again and then head to SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art). They have a couple of good exhibitions plus a couple of paintings by Diego Rivera that Ieuan wanted to see.

We checked in on line for our flight and then got a taxi to Valencia Street in the Mission district, so that Ieuan could go to Aquarius Records. Come back to Union Square and head back to the hotel to pack up. It takes a while as we now have lots of stuff. Eat in the hotel again as we know the food ios nice here.

Thursday 21 February 2008 Day 184 Hotel Rex, San Francisco

Went out for coffee and to look in one of the big shopping centres Ieuan found a cd/dvd shop on the way, so spent a couple of hours in there. We met up in Borders later and went to the food court in the shopping centre for lunch. Had some nice Thai spicy chicken. By this point Ieuan is feeling pretty rough, he hasn’t been feeling great all day, so he heads back to the room. Lou carries on shopping.

Later as Ieuan still isn’t feeling great we go down to the hotel restaurant for dinner.

Wednesday 20 February 2008 Day 183 Hotel Rex, San Francisco

Get up and by nearly lunchtime are ready to go out. We stop at Borders cafe for a drink and then peruse the books and cds. Afterwards we catch a taxi to Haight (home of Hippies) so that Ieuan can go to Amoeba Music. He spends a couple of hours in there whilst Lou wanders up Haight and looks at the shops. We meet up again and got to a cafe for lunch.

We get a taxi back to Union Square just around the corner from the hotel, and go back to our room to drop stuff off. Heading out again we go to the Apple store and Virgin and Lou explores further shops while Ieuan remains in Virgin.

At about 8pm we head out to the New Delhi Indian restaurant, the place looked nice, but the food wasn’t so good. Back at the hotel we watched some more episodes of Long Way Round and then went to sleep.

Tuesday 19 February 2008 Day 182 Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre, Canada

We pack up and catch a taxi to the airport for our 14:20 flight to San Francisco. Arrive at the airport at about 12 to check in and find the flight has been delayed until 4pm. We wander around the shops and Lou buys some dvds and then we get lunch, before sitting down to wait.

We board at about 4, but then spend another hour or so parked up in a remote area of the airport waiting to take off, eventually leaving at about 5:15. The 2 hour flight drags on and the back of the seat entertainment system breaks, so we can’t watch that! On the way down it’s quite bumpy for a while, but we don’t get any info from the flight crew.

We land and pick up our bags and get in a taxi in the pouring rain. Hotel Rex looks nice, the staff are very helpful and it is very nicely done out, with nice attention to detail and a box of 2 chocolates on arrival. We eat at the hotel restaurant Cafe Andre, which is very nice. We go to bed and watch an episode of Long Way Round.

Monday 18 February 2008 Day 181 Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre, Canada

There’s quite a lot of low level mist when we wake up in the morning, but it soon starts to clear. Lou gets Ieuan breakfast from the Starbucks in the basement and we try to do the typing to bring the blog up to date.

Later we go to the post office and get some boxes to send some stuff home, get back and pack them up. Not only does this mean that we have less to carry, but apparently we can’t take Cuban items into the states, they’ll be confiscated if found.

We take the boxes down to the PO and send them off, being annoyed that there are only 2 options here, cheap an very slow, or fast and expensive, we’ve been used to a third option, so we choose the cheaper option, meaning the boxes will be back anywhere up to a month after we get back. Do some last minute shopping and head back to the room.

In the evening we have a very nice meal at an Italian restaurant, Don Francescos, where the young waiter was extremely attentive and very keen to impress upon us the merits of some of British Columbia’s local wines, telling us lots about Mission Hills and the ‘snakey’ lake in the area. Ieuan feeling a bit better now.

Sunday 17 February 2008 Day 180 Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre, Canada

We go back into town and do some more shopping, before having lunch (another pick and mix salad option that was nowhere near as good as yesterday’s) at a deli in the food store near the hotel.

In the afternoon we head down to the harbour and walk around the sea wall, watching some float planes taking off. It’s really sunny and there is snow on the mountains north of the city, (this makes for some great views looking towards the mountains from a few blocks from the waterfront, with the mountains appearing between the tower block) however it’s also really cold when you are in the shadow and Ieuan isn’t feeling very well, so we head off to the Vancouver Art Gallery, where we don’t quite get to look at the exhibitions as we spend an hour or so browsing in the gallery shop.

Later on as Ieuan is feeling worse we decide to order room service for dinner, so we get a pizza and eat it in bed, watching the final 4 episodes of Race to Dakar.

Saturday 16 February 2008 Day 179 Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre, Canada

We get up and have a great view over downtown Vancouver, with snow capped mountains in the background. The sun is out and it’s cold but crisp.

We head out to look around the area and go to the shops, stopping for lunch at a great salad and fruit bar called Salad Loop. There are some good shops and we spend a while perusing the bookshops and record shops. Having spent time wondering where everyone was, after all it’s a Saturday and we expected the place to be busy at least, we arrive at Robson Street which is lined with chain stores and all the people. We spend some time here. By about 5pm it’s pretty cold and we head back to the hotel to warm up.

That night, we try an Indian restaurant on the main strip, which is ok, certainly not great.