Highlights of San Francisco (and first few days of new zealand!)

Thought the time had come for a proper blog update but we are on a computer with 3 different alphabets on the keys so is very confusing!!!

Highlights of San Francisco:
(In date order)
1) Bristol Farms - an amazing food store (a bit like Harrods) that even sold Quorn!
2) Hair straightening guy and nail guy - we walked into a shopping center and a guy stopped Claire and decided to straighten her hair! - trying to sell us his "amazing" straighteners... Claire did almost buy them... we then got stopped by the nail guy who wanted to give us a flower (how could we refuse!!) so we had our nails done :) We never brought any of their things, despite saying we'd come back - so we could get rid of them! Were slightly worried when we entered into the shopping center again, but we did manage to avoid them!
3) Chinatown tea tasting-who would have known there were so many teas??! With such unusual names! Our favourites were Jasmine Pearl and Lychee Black Tea :) Weng taught us all about tea, and even gave us his number - we must have made quite an impression! (I think our cowboy style hats helped with this! - we do seem to draw quite a bit of attention to ourselves wearing our hats!) We promised to visit Weng again on Saturday but we ran out of time before our flight (and decided carrying china tea cups round with us was probably a silly idea...) but Claire phoned him before we left our hostel and he seemed quite upset that we weren't coming to visit him! :s
4) Boudin's Bakery - awesome bakery with great sourdough pizza and animal shaped bread! We went on a backstage tour and did bread tasting - so nice, and even had chocolate raisin bread!
5) The Jamaican guy disguising himself as a bush! He hid behind a bin with a makeshift bush in front of him and jumped out on people unexpectedly. Watching people's reactions was hilarious!
6) Lovefest - cool hippie parade!
7) Zoostation - a cool band we watched for ages to celebrate Pier 39's 30th Birthday. The pier is an upmarket version of Weston!
8) Tram rides
9) City Lights Bookstore - we can now say we've been there!
10) Alcatraz - the island has a long history but the most interesting was when it was a high security prison, even Al Capone was there... the tour was really interesting, especially finding out about the great escape.
11) The Golden Gate Bridge - so amazing and magical. Took soooo many pictures as we walked across it! It's just fab, and what we came to San Fran to see :)
12) Getting our washing locked in the bathroom - it was hilarious, we hadn't laughed that much for ages!
13) The Palace of Fine Arts - a really pretty building, surrounded by a lake. We had our elevenses there!
14) The Civic Center - very posh!
15) Cheese tasting at the Civic Center market - Claire's pickiness with cheese led to an extensive cheese tasting session, which even included vanilla bean cream cheese! We eventually brought some Firehouse Cheddar, which was lush!
16) Meeting a couple from Stroud, who come to the Gloucester Road frequently - they knew all about Joe's Bakery and Scoopaway (Sophie even thought she recognised them from serving them) It was so random, and proves what a small world it is!
17) The Japanese Supermarket
18) Trader Joes - a ranch style food store where we got some very good biscuits and chocolate
19) Our cooking - we've done quite well with lots of roast potatoes and roast carrots... we even had toad in the hole one night... we're getting good at improvising including our improvisation of Cauliflower cheese in a frying pan!
20) All the lovely people we've met :D

So now we are in New Zealand!! Have spent the last few days wandering round Auckland- a really lovely city. We have been keeping up the British traditions by having scones and jam and cream for afternoon tea! Sophie is turning Claire into a fan of peppermint tea!!

Tomorrow we're going on a free tour of Auckland (no expenses spared!) and then heading up to Paihia in the Bay of Islands on Friday on the Magic Bus! :)