Christmassy Times in The Bay

So San Francisco turns out to be a really lovely city - quite different from the other North American cities we've visited so far. First of all it's very Spanish looking which is unsurprising as that's who first colonised area. There were many buidings which wouldn't be out of place in Havana or in Lima. Also, it's always really disconcerting and quite cool seeing the really famous landmarks right in front of you and here we have the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz (although prior to visiting all my knowledge on Alcatraz and San Francisco comes from Eddie Izzard). The other thing is, it's surprising how Californian all the people look and sound.They all have the "laid back man" accent, may of them have long hair (men and women) or mullets and they don't have any aversions to wearing shorts even when it's freezing cold and chucking it down rain. Despite our bleary-eyed-ness we were able to take in a lot of the sites, practically stumbling upon some pretty well known areas and street names (Haight-Asbury where the summer of love was centred being a good example). We found Fisherman's warf which was kinda touristy but also cool - especially when you get out and rough the corner where there's loads of nice shops.

The next day was earmarked for a touristy site - the sort of thing we usually avoid but this was a must: Alcatraz. Prior to taking the Ferry we made our way to "Boudin's", a bakery next to the wharf we'd passed the previous day. It turns out (unbeknownst to us) that San Francisco is the home of sourdough bread, something that has now taken off across the world. Here they use a load as a soup bowl, serving up delights like clam chowder and tomato soup in it. We both had the clam chowder which was fab, especially when you get to eat the bowl afterwards. We bought a couple of the loaves as well to have a go with ourselves that evening.

Alcatraz was a forbidding place, particularly in the grey, rainy weather we encountered it in. It started off life with just a lighthouse on it before becoming a military fort (being perfectly situated to guard the San Francisco Bay), a military prison and then the high-security penitentiary it's famous for. The prison held a number of famous criminals including Al Capone and George Stroud, the "Bird Man". It must have been a hellish place to be - there was little in the way of entertainment as this was a day that punishment rather than reform was the ideal. Particularly uncooperative inmates were sent to solitary confinement or "The Hole" where the cells had no bars to let light in - they were literally kept in the dark for days. In the tour commentary there was a story of one inmate in The Hole who passed time by tossing a button into the air, hunting for it in the dark until it was found before repeating the entertainment over again. These days it would be regarded as a form of torture and against international law unless you were clever enough to keep your prisoners in a corner of Cuba...

It was eventually closed in 1963 as it was no longer financially viable and also, attitudes towards prison were moving towards reform rather than punishment. It lay abandoned for years before in the late 60s it was occupied by a bunch of Native Americans who managed to hold out for over a year and a half in a statement of their rights to live as they wanted to (relocation and "Americanisation" policies being the order of the day at this point). It was a particularly powerful statement that the first land viewed as ships entered they bay belonged to the Native Americans. The occupation eventually ended but it's thought to have been the catalyst for the changing in laws and attitudes surrounding the Native Americans.

That evening we had our own sourdough experiment with the bread we'd bought in the bakery. I made a bolognese sauce which we served in the sourdough bowls with some carrots on the side. It was fab and we agreed that in future all soups should be served that way. I was a bit concerned about how to cut out the hole but a cut round with the knife and scoop out with the hands did the trick.

California in many people's minds is the home of wine and this is a trick we didn't want to miss out on. Like much of North America, transport to remoter areas is really tricky but thankfully, Casey was able to lend us his car while he was working at the gas station. It had clearly been through the wars (and rained on us inside on occasions) but drove like a dream and was a huge boon. There are two wine valleys: Sonoma and Napa and since Sonoma was the nearest, that's where we headed. First we took in Sonoma itself which is a lovely wee town with loads of wine shops and a really fab deli giving out free samples of cheese and fudge. We then headed up the valley to take our chances in the wineries. We wandered into a couple of the tasting rooms before settling on one (Blackstone) which only charged $5 to taste 4 wines. I was driving so Charlotte was doing the tasting. The guy there (like all the folk we've encountered in California) was exceptionally friendly and keen to chat about Scotland and his own visit there. C particularly like the Pinot Noir so we took note of that and moved on. The other winery we visited was the Robledo Family Winery. This one was particularly impressive as the owner, Reynaldo Robledo was originally a Mexican migrant vineyard worker (a grape picker essentially) who had managed to build up the expertise and cash to open his own place. He employs his whole family (and there's many of them) so it really is a family business in the true sense. The guys there were really lovely and enthusiastic about telling us the story. It was particularly nice to see the photo of Reynaldo with Obama and the Mexican president taken at a dinner he'd been at. Charlotte's favourite there was the 2006 "El Rey" ("The King") Cabernet Sauvignon. Unfortunately, the budget wouldn't allow us to buy a bottle but we did feel we'd really had a proper Californian wine experience.

The rain hammered on our roof all night. Incidently, I should mention that we were staying in a stand-alone apartment in the garden of Casey's folks house. Casey himself usually lives in it when he's here but he'd gone to stay in one of the guest bedrooms in the house so we could use it. What a man! Vicky and Dusty, his mum and brother are both artists and have just opened up a gallery down the road. It had been closed every time that we'd tried to go in but Casey was good enough to get hold of the key and give us a private visit. It's a great place - a wee gallery at the front and open-plan booths to act as studios at the back. They've already managed to get a photographer to take one of the booths and there's more artists on the way. The Divines' artowrok is stunning. Dusty's is based on fantasy (he also does illustration) and wouldn't be out place illustrating the likes of J. R. R. Tolkien or Neil Gaiman. He had some great female figues and some of the colours and textures were just amazing. Vicky's is mostly still life. She'd painted my favourite painting of the gallery which was their cat in a garden seen through a bevelled window. I loved the way she'd got the effect of the bevel of the windows. There was also a really cool one of a bowl of apples with a gun and an iguana (just to make you ask I guess).

Casey dropped us off at the Marin Civic Centre. It's a really odd building which has been used in a couple of movies. We were there for the Farmer's Market, reputedly one of the biggest in the state. The weather was very changeable and would be OK for a bit and then pour for a bit, much to the deficit of the stallholders who still seemed to maintain their Californian cheer. There were free samples abound including cheese, hot pepper sauces, yoghurt (cow and sheep milk!), tofu and a load of Afghan breads and sauces. The women with the Afghan stuff was like a machine slapping sauces on the bread and then handing it to anyone who stopped to breath. We bought tofu, Afghan sauces and bread, red and yellow beetroots, a brownie, a cinnamon bun and some apple cider and headed back to the Divine's place to shelter from the teaming rain. Thanks to my Moray House application I now have access to the University's proxy so we watched the Howard Goodall "Truth About Christmas Carols". It was great a and had much of it's background music taken from my favourite Christmas album, Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band's "A Tapestry of Carols". It also had a great and lengthy section on C.F. Alexander, the writer of "Once in Royal David's City" who is C's 6th great aunt. There was also a nice bit with Bella Hardy and Ian Stephenson. We were probably watching just as the St. James 9 Lessons and Carols was on (if it hadn't been called of for snow) so that was appropriate. We also followed one of my Christmas traditions by watching the 1984 BBC series of "The Box of Delights", something that you can also do by either buying the DVD or by watching it on YouTube.

On our last day in San Francisco we headed into the countryside. It was still raining but we had Casey's car, now with the leak fixed by that savour of all mankind - gaffer tape! There's lots of lovely woods and beach around Fairfax so we took a wee loop route that gave us a taste of both. Being the stalwart adventurers we are, we even braved the rain and resultant mud for a 5 mile walk. We rewarded ourselves back at the Divine's place with some Krispy Kreme doughnuts from Safeway the calories of which probably negated the walk. Never mind.

Casey's last act of heroism was to drive us into San Francisco to catch the train to San Jose where we were to stay with Fiona, Charlotte's dad's cousin. She's the USA sales and marketing manager for a company that makes seals that can withstand the crazy physical and chemical conditions that are necessary in processes such as silicon chip manufacture - a useful product here in silicon valley. In fact, they're used in all sorts of bits of kit so I'd bet my bottom dollar that the School of Chemistry back home has a few. Given that we were now in the lead up to Christmas our days in San Jose were pretty lazy with wanders round the area and (bravely for me since my cycling accident a few years back) a cycle into Los Gatos which has quite a few pretty Spanish-type buildings. Like us, Fiona is really into cooking and has a lovely kitchen so we took the opportunity to fling ourselves into a bit of Christmas cooking with mince pies and shortbread. We also made a meal for Fiona and her daughter Gemma of giant tomatoes baked with an egg and cream inside accompanied by my famous wedges with roasted garlic dip. Having a kitchen is a thing that we really miss about not having a home and Christmas is a time that we generally do a lot of cooking so it was great to be able to do that again.

On the 24th December I opened the last door on my self-made advent calendar. Each day we've taken a photos of me opening the doors so these are in our special Christmas video with some other highlights from December.

That night we went to bed listening for the sound of sleighbells...

Christmas day arrived and for the most part smelt of BBQing turkey. Fiona was the goddess of the Christmas meal and was preparing a full-on Christmas meal but the oven couldn't take all the things requiring baking so the only thing for it was to BBQ the turkey. How sad. She'd even made a proper Chriistmas pudding complete with a mascarpone brandy sauce. There was a card for Charlotte and me on the table when we came down which turned out to be an IOU for T-shirts from Gemma. She's recently started up a business selling bespoke T-shirts and even has her own printer. It's an amazing beast. We hummed and hawed for ages about what to have but eventually settled on "Will Play for Food" with a picture of a cat playing the fiddle. It was really cool to be able to watch your own T-shirts being printed. That afternoon Fiona's brother in-law and his wife came round for the Christmas meal. We greeted them with our mulled wine and chatted loads about our trip and what we do back in Edinburgh. Fiona's brother-in-law is also a musician so we had plenty in common there. The meal came and was fantastic - turkey, roast tatties, sweet potato dauphinois, sprouts, carrots, a classic Christmas meal and the BBQd turkey was a particular highlight. As we wolfed down the pud I felt glad to be in a place where Christmas is properly celebrated. It would have been dreadful to miss it! After dinner we chatted more a played some tunes before parting company and passing out. It was a fantastic Christmas day and certainly one to remember. We even got a present from Fiona's in-laws of a Starbucks voucher. A very useful thing when you're needing a pep-up.

We took the train the next day which was to be our last long-distance journey in North America. as our Greyhound passes had ran out there was no need to suffer the hound any longer so we took the slightly luxurious option. It was a double-decker train - something I'd never seen before and we were on the top deck which was pretty exciting. After 10 hours we arrived in LA, got a bus to the airport and got the courtesy shuttle to the hostel. When we arrived at reception it was totally insane. There was a woman having an argument with reception about her kids being accused of stealing someone else's laptop charger. We got the ditzy blond who seemed to take an age to check us in getting very confused about whether we'd booked or not and how many beds we'd booked. When we eventually got to our room and opened the door the smell of damp hit us in the face. The carpet was soaking wet - probably a result of the shower room having little in the way of ventilation and thus every showerer filled the room with steam. It was a bit like camping - you had to make sure you had everything within arms length before getting into bed and taking off your shoes. It was cheap though and we'd been travelling for ages so we put our heads down and crashed out.

We took the bus into Hollywood the next day. We only had a single day in LA so it seemed th obvious destination. When we got out onto Hollywood Boulevard it was a crazy place. There were tourists absolutely everywhere and loads of folk trying to sell us tours round the districts where the celebrities lives - seems a bit voyeuristic to me. It was cool to see all the stars on the pavement and also cool to see the "Hollywood" sign up on the hill. We also took in Sunset Boulevard and Melrose Avenue which had all the hip-and-groovy boutiques. I wouldn't say it was a favourite place of either of us but was certainly interesting to see. Back at the lodge we got back to find that Charlotte's wash bag had been stolen - we strongly suspected it was the room cleaner. Luckily, we'd had the foresight to take all the valuables with us as there were no lockers apparent. She was really and understandably annoyed as it had load of things that are really important to her. It was a difficult situation as we're as sure as we can be that it was the maid but can't prove it. Everything else was shut up in our bags and it didn't look like they had been tampered with thankfully.

The next morning, Charlotte had a chat with the maid who let her have a look in her storage cupboard and what do you know? Ther was her shower bag hanging up. It was tantamount to admitting that one of them had stolen it - I was flabbergasted she got it back! The courtesy shuttle took us to the airport where after check-in we encountered the longest queue for security I've ever seen. It moved pretty quickly and we made it to the gate just as the flight was boarding. The plane took off and we headed west....

The rain it raineth every day

Paul neglected to mention that in all the tension created by the transfer back to US Greyhound, he left his beloved Advent calendar at the station. It's an endless stream of losing important things, really!

In Portland, Oregon, we were visiting some more Inca Trail compatriots, Barb (and John), Dick (and Tsuru). We were greeted by torrential rain that barely stopped pouring the whole week we were there. Great. The rain didn't stop Barb and John from showing us the Oregon sights, however. The whole area around Portland is tree-ful and beautiful (we could tell through the rain) - filled with conifers, gorges, waterfalls, rivers and the like. On the first day they took us to a science museum where Paul re-discovered his inner 10-year-old (a regular thing these days) and I had an encounter with an axolotl. I never realised what an intensely sinister-looking creature it is. My only other experience with them is through a painting of me which hangs in a gallery of the same name!

That evening we met a friend of B+J's who'd once studied in Edinburgh, and the next day we went out for breakfast - which is something Paul's been looking forward to for ages. Those American portion sizes we hear so much about are no exaggeration. I could barely make it through my 'small breakfast'. Bloated, we went for a drive to have a look at a mist-shrouded gorge, and several waterfalls including Multnomah Falls, which was swollen to a massive size. In the evening we were re-united with Dick and Tsuru, and reminisced about the Inca Trail, Freddie, and 'coca leaps'.

I have to make a comment about B+J's house. It has a library! I've always wanted one - and they've got one, with rows of shelves and everything! So exciting. Anyway, Saturday was so washed out that we cowered in the house whilst Barb bravely went out to help her daughter-out-law (called this because she's not actually married to B+J's son, so not 'in-law') set up her stall for the Saturday market (she's an artist). We waited cosily inside, before heading out to see the new Narnia film (incidentally, for those who've seen it - what's with the cheesy theme song, eh? Also, what's with the plot? The one strong(ish) point seemed to be Eustace, and he was CGI for most of it.)

Sundays B+J's family go out for breakfast together (Paul is very excited about all this breakfasting) - so we met their son David, daughter-out-law Sarah, and Barb's mum. Sunday afternoon was something which is becoming one if their winter traditions - we went to the house of their friends Max and Leslie to make tamales. Max is from New Mexico and gets his beans straight from there, I'll have you know. The men sat around watching the football (Paul participated in order to try and understand its appeal - it still looks like wussy rugby to me) whilst the ladies made the tamales. It involved rolling some shredded pork and some corn stuff in corn husks to be steamed. We're not sure how many we made, but it was enough to last 3 households the winter! Tsuru's were the prettiest. We finished up with Paul and I doing a bit of music - we must sing for our supper after all!

Monday Barb was busy learning about taxes (zzzzzzzz), so it was Dick and Tsuru's turn to babysit us. We took a drive out to the coast - it was like being back in Scotland, what with all the rain and the bleak looking waves. Still more gorgeous scenery though. Then we visited Astoria, renowned for its bridge, but more exciting to Paul for its movie locations. We trespassed at the houses that were used in Short Circuit and The Goonies. That evening Tsuru made Japanese things for us, and we drank their wine (they have a vineyard). Tsuru also spent time helping us work out the Japanese leg of our trip, which was no end of help and for which we shall be eternally grateful. It's no longer such a scary and expensive place. It's just an expensive place now.

Tuesday night was another dinner with more people to meet - this time Sarah's parents. Her dad is a banjo player in a bluegrass band, so we got some good tunes with him. He's also a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. I just love the term 'creative anachronism'!

Weds it was time to take our leave, and as an up-yours to us, the rain stopped and the sun came out a teeny bit. Our bus wasn't until the evening, so we took a walk around Portland - which we discovered is a really nice city! All the shops were in full Christmas bloom (which made Paul happy - I forgot to mention that he'd managed to print out a new Advent calendar so all was right with the world again). My favourite part of the day was discovering a gorgeous shop full of beautiful things (www.mystiqueartisangallery.com) - I was so sad it wasn't in Edinburgh. Lots of lovely artwork (a lot not mentioned on the website for some reason, my favourite stuff was by this artist: www.daviddelamare.com) and carnival masks. But not falling into the cliche that those kinds of shops are prone to do. Just really interesting artwork.

Sadly we had to say goodbye to Barb and John, but it was fantastic to see them again and to get to know them better. It's been so nice to have been able to meet up with so many of the Peru people. This was also to be our last Greyhound journey, and not one we'd forget in a hurry! For a start, Paul nearly got himself arrested in the station for trying to take a photo of the jaunty Christmas hat the staff had put on an effigy of the Hound. Bad Paul. Obviously that sort of subversive act is illegal. Then, a few hours into the journey (an overnight, I might add), our bus broke down. Luckily it was only about a mile from a station, and we were able to half crawl, half coast in. But then subdued chaos arose.

We all got off and mooched around in a sort of concerned indignation. There was a bus behind ours which we'd be getting on, but it was clear that there was no way we'd all fit. The sharper of us made sure we were at the front of whatever queues there were. I left Paul with the bags and got onto the new bus just as a lady was moving out of a double seat carrying a 2-year-old and joined her 5-year-old opposite. She let me claim her original seat, before the driver told us all to get off to let the original passengers find their places again. I knew that double seat was now free, so I sneakily left my stuff on it and got off the bus with everyone else. Quick thinking, eh? The whole time I was terrified I was going to be discovered and the driver was going to shout at me. It's a lucky thing I did do that though, as there weren't enough seats and there was no way Paul and I would have been sitting together otherwise.

More and more people got on, and then there were the new passengers to account for. They had to stand in the aisles, and that mum ended up with both kids on her lap as she gave up her last seat. I am very grateful to her - that was a long night, worse for the people in the aisles. What a way to end our Greyhound odyssey!

The bus took us to Sacramento, California, where it finally wasn't raining and where Casey (another uni folksoc friend) was waiting for us in his car. Casey currently lives a ridiculous lifestyle which meant he hadn't been to bed the night before as he'd been up finishing prototypes for a Useful Thing he is about to make millions on. He does 12 hour shifts at a petrol station multitasking by developing his company there, and the rest of the hours he can force himself to stay awake for honing the product. Suffice it to say, we were quite privileged that he had time to pick us up!

California is becoming one of my new favourite places, and I especially love Casey's family home in Fairfax near San Francisco. It was gloriously sunny and we drove up a super-steep driveway through woods to the house (pausing to nudge the deer out of our path). The house is something that is continuously growing (Casey's dad is an architect) and is full of graceful mess both inside and out (and a swimming pool!). Anyway, it's beautiful - I wish I lived there. Paul was particularly pleased about the Christmas tree in the living room.

Casey had things to do (are we surprised?) so he dropped us at the bus station and Paul and I ventured into San Francisco (barely awake, but sensible enough to make the most of the sunshine... in our heart of hearts we knew it wouldn't last). We discovered that rightly is San Francisco reputed for being a Really Cool city, and spent the day wandering around and enjoying the sunshine. Casey took us out for Mexican in the evening (apparently, outside of Mexico, California is the place to have it) - but even then the rain was setting in. The sunshine was misleading. It was downpour from then on.