After an 11 hour flight, hour at immigration, 30 minutes wait for the bags, a 20 minute walk to the station in the airport then a 30 minute ride on the train to the City the only thing we wanted to do was get something to eat and go to bed while watching TV so that's what we did, almost. There was a Walgreen’s shop just around the corner from the hotel so we stopped off in there to stock up on snacks and drinks after we had checked into the hotel, glad we had a fridge in the room now as like most places in the USA it's really warm in the hotels. Next port of call was to find a booze shop, that wasn't too far either, then it was time to crash out for what was left of the rest of the night which wasn't much, 11:30 pm now but so far everything had gone to plan, even the B.A.R.T (Bay Area Rapid Transport) was alright plus the station that we got off at was only a 5 minute walk around the corner.
The Pickwick Hotel isn’t part of any of the large chain of hotels which we prefer and was built in the 1920s, The location was perfect for us as it was right near to Market Street bus stops, trams, historic trams and of course the Cable Cars that this city is so famous for. Even though it was a very busy road where the traffic never seemed to stop and the fire trucks regularly forced their way up the road in the opposite direction that the traffic was flowing with horns and sirens blazing it didn’t really bother us and after the first night we didn’t even hear them most of the time. I think the only downside to this place is the number of beggars that seem to be everywhere in San Francisco; most of which seem to be completely crazy but I suppose it takes all sorts of people to make a world so you just have to ignore them as best you can and after a while you don’t seem to notice them anymore apart from the ones that are screaming at trees and buildings. So that was a very long day over with, I suppose plane ride didn't help much.
So here we are in a city that we started planning for back in 2010 even before we had passports.
