San Fran with Hourann

After returning successfully from our Vegas trip, it was time for us to explore San Fran with Hourann (see how that rhymes).

On Friday night (after returning from Vegas), we met Hourann in the airport. He asked us if we would like to go out with him that night, but we were tired from our travels, and declined. We made it home to Palo Alto, all chipped in and cooked a stir fry, before chatting with one of Hourann's housemates. His name was Brian and he works on electric cars at a company called Tesla. So cool.

All the housemates seem to be people who are either currently doing, or have recently completed, pHD's at Stanford. They talk about traveling to Africa to basically save ghuman lives and do ground-breaking research. Very interesting, but a little difficult to relate to? But they are all super friendly and fun to converse with.

On Saturday we went into San Jose (Do you know the way to San Jose? I've been away so long, I may go wrong and lose my way.) to watch an ice hockey game between the San Jose Sharks and the visiting Dallas Stars. We were going for the Sharks. The beginning of the game was very exciting with shark shaped Zambonies, and a shark shaped entrance archway for the players. Dallas scored the first goal, which put us on edge, but San Jose scored the net couple of goals to take the lead. In the final period the sharks were up 4-2 with a few minutes to go, and the Stars pulled their goalie to put an extra player on the ice (to increase their chances of catching up). This of course led to San Jose scoring an easy goal, and they we ended up winning 5 goals to 2. It was definitely a highlight of the trip.



We were accompanied to the game by Hourann and his workmate Brad, who drove us to the game and gave us a short driving tour of San Jose. He was pretty funny, but pulled fun at the buildings and stuff in San Jose as they are a little underwhelming. He then dropped us off in a park (which may have been called Alamo Square?). This park is the park that the Full House cast run around in during the opening credits of the show! And we could see the Full House house just across the street. Me and Cara got a photo outside of it.


Then we went on a bus to see the golden gate bridge. We took touristy photos of us in front of it, and we walked up to the first tower before turning back. It is quite an awesome sight to behold.


Following our bridge experience we walked some of the steeper streets of San Francisco, saw a statue of Yoda at a LucasFilm workplace, explored a swanky suburb, explored The Mission (Hourann's favourite nightlife spot), had Mexican food while being quite close to Mexico(relatively), and had a drink at a trendy bar called Elbow Room. We then took the train back to Palo Alto, where we walked in the rain for 15 minutes back to Hourann's place. We were pretty soaked.


Today we woke up and traveled into the city again. We attempted to go on a boat to Alcatraz (but it was booked out until tomorrow, and so we booked it in for tomorrow), we explored Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39 (where there were a bunch of Sea-Lions, just hanging out), and I got In-n-Out Burger. It was delicious. We then had some appetizers at the hard rock cafe for lunch and rocked out to the cool music videos. We explored Golden Gate Park and Haight-Ashbury (the old 60's hippy district). We rode on the trams and the cable cars (which broke down), before heading home to have some Chinese food in Palo Alto and sit on the internet for a few minutes.

And that is you basically all caught up.