Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you...

Good evening all - yes, despite the clock just turning over to 6:00pm (which means 11:00am Wednesday in Melbourne, and 9:00pm Tuesday in the eastern USA) and the sun still shining brightly in the San Francisco sky, I'm going with good evening, as a lot has been packed into today, Sarah's birthday!! The unwritten rule of "never reveal a lady's age" prevents me from saying how old she turns today - that, and she's sitting next to me watching me write!! Perhaps she may tell you herself later in this blog - yes, Tuesday June 23rd. with only about 53 hours to go in our American Adventure, is the time that one Sarah Jane Lynn is going to make her blog debut!!!!

But before we do (and I revert to the normal teaser rule of saving what everybody wants to see until later in the blog), let's go over a quick (remember - five bucks for twenty minutes, although I brought a prepaid card today which gives me sixty minutes for twelve bucks - bargain!!) recap of the day's activities. Breakfast was on the house today - it was part of our accommodation package here at the Pickwick Hotel, so we ventured into Little Joe's Restaurant in the hotel foyer, and picked any item off the menu. The Ham and Egg Sandwich, with hash browns (not the square hash browns that Aussies think of - this is more like a potato put through a cheese grater then fried, and is quite tasty), was the single greatest breakfast I've eaten in America, and almost put thoughts of white Up bread toasted with Vegemite into the back of my mind!! (I've got a new craving - Aussie sausages, in bread, cooked on the barbie - it must be this summer weather!!). After that, and Sarah's fried eggs, bacon and hash browns were consumerd (well, devoured, the Eating Machine is back with a vengenance having aged another year), we stepped out into San Francisco, headed for a short stroll to where a double-decker bus was waiting to pick us up to give a guided tour of San Francisco.

I'm sure you've all seen the open-air tourist double-decker buses (if you've been to New York or Sydney, you could hardly miss them), which offer the ability to either stay on the bus as it gives you a narrated tour around your specified city, or you can hop off at any number of designated stops?? That's what we took today throughout San Francisco - and it was good. To me, there's not many things to top travelling in an open-air fashion, be it bus, ferry or otherwise, and especially when you get a sunny day that's not too hot (I don't think it would have gotten above 70 degrees today - which is about 22 degress Celsius, as San Francisco never really heats up). It showed us all of the major San Francisco downtown landmarks, but the real highlight of the bus was when it passed through the downtown city boundary, and headed for a red-coloured bridge that looked strikingly familiar!!! Yep, the bus took us to a look-out point where we could see the Golden Gate Bridge, then took us on a ride over the bridge, then back over towards San Francisco. It was pretty awesome to go over it, but this was the one disadvantage of the open-air bus arrangement, as it was bloody windy and cold going over the bridge - so much so that I had to take off my beloved Red Sox baseball cap to stop it being a resident of San Francisco Bay!! The views from the bridge weren't as breathtaking as they could have been, as it was still reasonably early in the morning and the morning fog hadn't yet cleared over the bay, meaning that both downtown San Francisco and Alcatraz weren't at their picturesque best. We disembarked off the bus in San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf district - an area with heaps of shops and eateries, and headed for Pier 39, where we were to meet a connecting shuttle to the next, and major, of our activities for the day. We had some time up our sleeves though, so we wandered around Pier 39 for a while, where the fog had cleared up and we were able to take photos (which, given that I'm on a public computer, can't be uploaded, but will be shown when we get back to Oz on the weekend) of Alcatraz and of San Francisco's sea lion population, which have an area at Pier 39 where they can "beach" themselves on a series of floating pontoons and sun their bodies, or have play-fights, as most seemed to be doing. We even took in lunch at the aptly named Sea Lion Cafe, where we had great views of the sea lions, Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge to accompany us (after one of our "random American" photos for the day, one of our best so far with Alcatraz featuring in the background).

After lunch, and a stop at a souvenir shop (where I couldn't help myself, and bought a Red Sox hoodie), we waited at the taxi rank for Pier 39 for our connecting shuttle to.....the San Francisco SeaPlane. One of Sarah's dreams for today was to take a helicopter ride over San Francisco - well, I went one step better and got the less noisy, better for photos Seaplane to do the honours. We were picked up (or, the "Kelly's" were picked up) and taken, along with an English couple, to the seaplane base in Sausalito, a suburb of San Francisco, which meant a less-windy ride over the Golden Gate Bridge again, and loaded into the plane for what was an awesome 35-minute plane ride (the plane was a seven-seater Fokker Friendship, but there were only five of us in there, so all was good) over San Francisco and it's surrounding areas, allowing us to view, and photograph, San Francisco from up high (and I wish I could show you the photos now, as they are pretty awesome)!! This was another of those activities that we both really enjoyed, as it was a bit of a departure from the normal kind of touristy-thing, and seemed to be over far too quickly for both of our likings.

When we landed and re-entered dry land (the plane takes off on water. so we had to walk along a dock that swayed with the tide a bit), we were shuttled back to Pier 39 at Fisherman's Pier, and jumped back on the hop-on, hop-off bus to our original stop, passing through some pretty interesting San Francisco sites on the way. After a visit to the Westfield shopping centre next door to pick up another part of Sarah's birthday present which was only released today (she'll tell you more about that shortly), as well as looking for another suitcase to bring all of our extra purchases home with us (no luck yet, couldn't find anything under $90, which is far too rude for what we need it for - no matter, the souvenir stores that specialise in 3 for $15 San Francisco t-shirts will look after us), we arrived back here at the Hotel Pickwick, which brings us to this point here. Dinner will be on the cards shortly - not sure where yet, in my role today as "birthday slave", I'm waiting to be told what to do in this regard), then I think Sarah has something else planned, which she is going to research on the Internet shortly.

Before she does though, I'm going to depart the floor for the night and say my goodbyes - I will return tomorrow night from Los Angeles (the plan for tomorrow is to take Highway 1 from San Francisco to Los Angeles - reportedly one of the most beautiful drives in America), as ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, it is my great pleasure to, on the anniversary of her birth, introduce to you for this first time in these blog pages to describe her birthday and her present haul in greater detail...the one, the only, Sarah Jane Lynn...all yours, honey!!

Well did I get spoilt today. Most of my presents i already knew about due to being there when he bought them but there was one in particular that I was no around for and this is a gold necklace with a heart on it with diamentes and 3 coloured stones on it which I adore. The last minute present was a Janet Evanovich novel which was only released today and the 15th in the series.

Off to dinner now (editors note - the Eating Machine grow restless), so goodbye from San Francisco.