Day 177 – 4th May – Los Angeles – Santa Barbara

We checked out of the hostel at 10am and were a bit tired! We walked to get a local SIM card as we hadn’t paid for a sat nav for our road trip and so needed some data for navigation! We then went to pick up our hire car for our road trip. We set off just after 12 from West Hollywood and went to Santa Monica first. We were going to stop but it was really busy and so we just picked up the coastal route and set off driving. It took a little bit of time to get used to driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road and understanding some of the traffic rules such as being able to turn right on red!

We drove for a couple of hours and arrived at Santa Barbara mid afternoon. We checked into our motel and were given some information about Santa Barbara and the helpful member of staff planned out some things we could do the next day. We were tired after the night before and we hadn’t had any food so we ordered a take away for tea and had an early night!

Day 178 – 5th May – Santa Barbara – Big Sur – Carmel

We got up and checked out of the motel and drove to the Mission.  The Santa Barbara Mission was established on 4th December 1786 and was the tenth of twenty-one California Missions to be founded by the Spanish Franciscans. The Mission is home to a community of Franciscan friars as well as having an active church on site too. As it was a Sunday we couldn’t visit the church as Mass was on so we had a walk around the grounds and visited the mausoleum and museum. The museum was interesting and contained a lot of information about how California was founded after the American war with the Mexicans.

After spending some time at the Mission we drove down to the pier and parked nearby. Every Sunday in Santa Barbara, the local artists display their artwork on the pavements in front of the beach and so we had a look around some of the stalls and then went for a walk into the pier. There were quite a few restaurants and shops on the pier and we spent a little bit of time looking around. There were also people fishing off the end of the pier. After about an hour walking around we went back to the car and started our journey up the coast towards Big Sur. After a couple of hours the road became quite spectacular with rolling hills and sheer drops down to the ocean. We stopped off at a few view points on route to Big Sur to take some photos of the scenery. At the stops, there were also lots of really tame squirrels that were taking food from people.

We then drove to Carmel to our accommodation for the evening. It was a nice lodge that we stayed at and we had dinner in the bar and a couple of drinks.

Day 179 – 6th May – Carmel – San Francisco

We set off mid morning from Carmel and stopped off in Santa Cruz on the way to San Francisco. Santa Cruz was a coastal town and had an amusement park on the beach. We spent a bit of time walking around and grabbed some lunch before leaving for San Francisco to drop the car off. We arrived in San Francisco about 4pm and went to check into the hostel. This was the most expensive hostel that I’ve ever stayed in! Prices in San Francisco were ridiculously high and we’d been told that along with New York it was the most expensive place in the USA. After we checked in we went for a walk and straight away were shocked at the amount of homelessness there was. It was really sad to see. We went to a bar to have a drink and then went for a really good Mexican meal close to our hotel.

Day 180 – 7th May – San Francisco

We got up early today and set off for Pier 33. We were running a little bit late and this wasn’t helped when we got the trolley the wrong way! After working this out we got off the trolley, crossed the road and got on the correct side! We arrived at Pier at 9:50am just in time for our 10am trip to Alcatraz. The ferry only took about 20 minutes and then we began our tour. We walked up to the cell house and started our audio tour. It was narrated by previous prison guards and prisoners and was really interesting. After the tour we got the ferry back to San Francisco and walked down to Pier 39. This pier has a lot of bars, restaurants and shops on it as well as the famous sea lions. We spent some time watching the sea lions fighting over their floats before walking to Fisherman’s Wharf for a look around. Again there are a lot of bars and restaurants here and we ended up at a brewery and burger place for lunch. When we had finished here it was late afternoon and we got an Uber back to the hostel to get ready for the evening. We had booked tickets to see White Lies and were both looking forward to going to a gig. The venue was about a two minute walk from the hostel and we got there just after 9pm. The venue; August Hall was really small and it wasn’t too busy so we had a great view of the stage and the band. The gig was really good and we went for a drink afterwards at an Irish bar and got a take away to take back to the hostel for tea!

Day 181 – 8th May – San Francisco

We had decided to do the hop on hop off bus tour today as it was our last day in San Francisco and there was still quite a lot we wanted to see. We got on just by our hostel and went through the centre of San Francisco seeing lots of historic building and having really good commentary from our guide. We also went through the hippy areas of Haight / Ashbury before heading out of the city to the Golden Gate Bridge. It was really windy on the top of the bus as we drove over and we stopped and got off the bus at the other side to take a few pictures. We waited for the next bus and then got off at Lombard Street and walked up the hill to see the ‘crooked street’. San Francisco is really hilly and it was steep to get up! We also saw the famous cable cars travelling up and down the hills too. From here it wasn’t too far from Fisherman’s Wharf where we stopped for lunch. Dan went to get a jacket potato and I went to get the famous clam chowder in a bread bowl. We sat and ate our lunch on a bench overlooking the bay. After this we got back on the bus and got off near Chinatown. San Francisco has the largest Chinatown in America and we spent some time walking around and ended up at Dragon Gate which is the southerly entrance into Chinatown. From here we weren’t too far from our hostel so we walked through Union square and through the shopping area back to the hostel to get ready for the evening. As we had both really enjoyed seeing White Lies the evening before, we had booked to see another artist this evening. We had a bit of time to relax before getting ready and walking to August Hall to see Tom Odell. Again it was another great gig and after getting a setlist from the gig we ordered an Uber eats and went back to the hostel to eat it!