After that we went to a place called Salinas in order to catch the bus in the morning to Monterey. In Monterey we did a 5 hour whale watching tour that was amazing. We saw whales for most of the trip and at the end there was about 4 or 5 of them in a group all feeding and jumping out of the water. One of them came right up to the boat as well and they really are massive. After that we chilled out in Monterey for the afternoon and stayed another night before leaving for Santa Cruz the next day.
We had one full day in Santa Cruz. In the morning we went to this place called “The Mystery Spot” which is a large wooded area where things happen that defy normal scientific laws e.g. objects roll uphill. We thought it might be a bit of a hoax so we went to go see and it is genuinely true, unexplainable and very strange! As soon as you enter the area you can sort of feel something in your body and you feel a bit off balance and weak. We were lead around and shown lots of different examples of things. Me and Chris were stood on level ground, one of us outside the boundary line, the other one inside and when we swapped places our heights totally changed and I was inches taller than Chris! We watched balls roll uphill and things like that as well. It was definitely worth doing. After that we went to the beach and spent the afternoon at the amusement park which was cool and had a walk along the beach and the pir in the evening.
Next was 3 days in San Francisco, one of my favourite cities in the world. As soon as we got there we went straight to pier 33 and managed to book tickets to go over to Alcatraz which was quite lucky seen as it was Memorial Day weekend and very busy. We walked along the piers and spent some time at pier 39 which is full of shops and restaurants. We went to Fishermans Wharf then just for a walk around towards Golden Gate Bridge but didn’t go all the way there as it is a long walk on foot. The next morning we did a walk around Russian Hill and the Crookedest St then to Coit tower to see views of the city. We walked through Chinatown and went to a tiny little shop/factory that sold really nice fortune cookies. We chilled out in the afternoon as were really tired and just had a few beers in the hostel in the evening. The next day was actually really sunny which was nice as it is usually very cloudy in San Francisco. We rented bikes and rode across Golden Gate Bridge then caught the ferry back from a place called Sausalito, which was lovely. We took the ferry over to Alcatraz and had our tour round the former prison, which was really interesting. Even though San Francisco was very busy that weekend it is a great city, really nicely set out with loads to do.
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