Silicon Valley

Today Pete and I woke fairly early and walked down the street toward the Avis car hire rental so we could hire a car for the day. Pete wanted to take a day out of this trip whilst we were in San Francisco to drive to Silicon Valley which is about an hour away from here to see the Apple and Google head offices...Yep, he is a total geek sometimes!

We ended up hiring out a small Ford Focus, it's a pretty snazzy little car and has a sunroof so I think it's pretty fricken awesome! They had a new Mazda 6 that we could have hired and given that eventually I want to upgrade my current 6 to the newer ones it would have been nice to test that out but the traffic here is already crazy enough I didn't want anything bigger than I needed..If I were in LA, I totally would have for sure!

The drive on out to Silicon Valley was a lovely, nice freeway drive with a bit of a country feel to it. Once we arrived in Silicon Valley, you defintely knew you had arrived. Nerds everywhere! ha

The apple head office was our first stop and it was a bit disappointing. I am not overly interested in any of that techy stuff but I tried my best to look interested for Pete's sake. The building was super dull though and the Apple Store at Charlestown Square is much bigger than the one they have at the head office here. I did find hilarious though that they had a carpark with dedicated spots to charge electric cars. It literally looked like a gas station with a bowser in every parking spot and the cars all had the nozzle hooked into their bonnets charging. It's a pretty practical idea but man did it look hilarious.

After this, we stopped in at Taco Bell for some lunch before heading on over to Google's head office. It was super colourful and all the little nerds were out the front riding around everywhere on the Google bikes. Good on them for getting around campus on bikes but that looked pretty hilarious also, the bikes were as colourful as the buildings haha...all jokes aside though I would totally ride them around campus if I lived there!

We snapped a few photos and then headed back into San Fran for a nice cruisey day of some more sightseeing. We went back to Pier 39 to view the Sea Lions in the daylight - they were just soo cute and feisty little things too! They most definitely don't mind a fight with one another and seemed to be very territorial.

We finally were able to take a look at the Golden Gate Bridge from close up. We've seen it whilst we have been here but as we haven't had access to a car we weren't able to get right up close to it as yet. I am glad we drove around to it today though as the bridge isn't much too look at unless your up close. The red colour of the bridge really pops and with the city behind it, you really begin to understand why it is such a touristy thing to see. It was

just beautiful!

After the bridge we then headed on over to Lombard Street. I've always wanted to go to Lombard Street here in San Fran as it is the worlds most crooked street and very famous. We parked a fair way away as there wasn't a great deal of parking close to the street and we hiked up a few hills to get to it. Thankfully today I have been feeling much better so was able to do so without too much hassle.. I've still got a cough and the sniffles and still need to stop and breathe if I walk for too long but my head is no longer on fire and I am able to walk around without feeling like death warmed up, it's great. I was starting to think I would never get better!

We watched a few of the cars drive down Lombard Street then we walked down it ourselves to continue watching the cars and take some happy snaps at the bottom. I saw a bunch of Asian tourists driving down the street and without sounding too racist I thought I should give it a go myself. Surely, if the Asian's can do the drive down it successfully then surely I can too! (C'mon, it's not that racist we all know how shitty Asian drivers are..) We trekked back up the hill and back to the car so I could do the drive down the hill and it was awesome - I am so glad I did it.

After having a car for almost the whole day we realised how much we missed the freedom of being able to cruise around at our own pace since leaving our car in Vegas. It's good to experience the public transport but Pete and I definitely love our road trips and driving holidays. With this said we decided to book our car for an extra day and return it at the airport tomorrow night before our flight takes off.

Having a car tomorrow will take away the stress of having to organise an airport shuttle and given that our flight leaves at 8pm it will allow us an extra day to explore a little further than we originally had planned so why the hell not?

The weather in San Fran was absolutely beautiful today. Clear sky's and not much wind at all, it was lovely. Tonight we decided to hit up the shops here for one final shopping spree in America before we head home. There is a massive Westfield shopping centre just a 10 minute walk away from where we are staying and it was open till 10pm. The shopping hours here are awesome by the way, everything stays open so late.

Pete and I did some Christmas shopping before heading down to a Denny's Diner restaurant not too far from where we are staying for one last dinner before heading back to our hotel.

Now to pack everything back up into our suitcases and get ready for the long haul back home tomorrow night. We have a few ideas that we can do tomorrow for our final day in San Francisco, I guess we will wake up early and see what the weather is like before we decide.

I cannot believe this is our last night here in America. We have done so much, had so many adventures and seen some amazing sights whilst we have been here these last few weeks and although I have been disappointed with a few of the places and spent this past week being sick as a dog, I have had the most amazing time and am super glad we came here.

With that said, however I do miss my bed, I miss my family and I miss my little kitten a ton. I also miss Australian food and Australian drinks and I cannot wait to get back into soccer to work of this

holiday weight! ha

I will keep you posted with our final days adventures tomorrow.
For the last time in America, good night x