June 18th 2008 - City Tour in San Francisco!

Today we left the hotel at 9.00 am to have a city tour of San Francisco.
Our first impression of the city is that there are many hills and steep roads. The weather was nice and we really feel in summer with all the flowers around us.
Once we picked up our guides we got into a typical cable car of San Francisco. It was a fun ride and some of us even high fived people from other cable cars when we passed them.
After the cable car ride we went to "Twin Peaks", the highest point of San Francisco to have a Panoramic view of the city.
Then we went to the "zig-zag road". It was beautiful, but not easy for car drivers to go down this way. We went to pier 39 to have lunch, and we had the opportunity to see wild sea lions.
Once our stomachs were full, we went to the cable car museum. It was interesting but we were happy to leave for Chinatown. There we went to a fortune cookie maker. It smelled nice...
We walked around in Chinatown. It was fun but the shop keepers weren't very polite. Chinatown is very different from the rest of the city. We had dinner at a chinese restaurant, it was good, but there was too much food. We, non-asians, had troubles with using the chop sticks (How do you eat rice with sticks?)
We are back at the hotel and we are having fun writing this to share our day with you. TADAAAAAAM !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (<--- for Cajsa's mum)

Cajsa Nolskog - Sweden

Gilles Van Herck - Belgium.

Hey this is Finja and Asli writing.

Today we had a great time in San Francisco. After a delicious breakfast we met our tour guides, Joyce and Henrietta, in downtown San Francisco. They taught us a lot about the history of the cable cars. All of us were so excited to get on the cable car and have a great view over San Francisco. It was an amazing experience.

The city hall was our next stop. We were able to take pictures there. All of us had even a better view over the city at the highest hill of the city. We saw the golden gate bridge, Alcatraz island, the bay, the pacific ocean and colourful houses. It was great.

At lunchtime all of us were getting hungry so we headed back to the downtown of the city. Before we had free time for lunch at pier 39, we visited the “crickedest” street in the world -> Lombard street.

At pier 39 our tour guide had some tips for us to find good restaurants. The sourdough bread is very famous in San Francisco so a lot of us decided to eat clam chowder soup in a sourdough bowl. It tasted very good. Our tour guide also told us to watch out for the sea lions. They were really cute but they smelled pretty bad ;)

After some free time at the pier we went to the cable car museum. Chinatown was the next place we were heading to. We also had time to shop there which some of us used to go to Macys and see David Beckham. Some others shopped in Chinatown and had their hand full of bags at the end of the day.

For dinner we had Chinese food. All of us were really full after eating there =) The bus picked us up at 7.20 in Chinatown and brought us to the hotel where we had free time to go swim, play soccer or just sleep.

This trip has been so much fun and we made so many great friends. It is amazing. We are sure tomorrow will be the last great day of this trip.

Finja Draxler (Austria) and Asli Alkan (Turkey)