It's the start of summer and i'm kind of bored. I can't bring myself to get out of bed even though i'm in desperate need of a shower and a toothbrush. The fact that it's 2pm has nothing to do with it at all.

San Fran with Bean, Ivan and for a while, Nicole was great while it lasted. It's such a wonderful city, so much character and not too shiny. One thing i loved very much were the cafes everywhere and the almost compulsory al fresco dining. Not cafes like Starbucks, but real Italian and French ones with waiters and baristas that spoke the language and English with an accent. In America, it's really all about value for money. The portions are ginormous. I could never finish my food although i always want more. One thing i found out about myself on this trip is that i'm quite a pig. Must be the "Yeo-Fong: Let's Go Makan" training. It didn't matter if i was hungry or not, the principle was: Got (new) food, Must eat. Downtown shopping was the usual big American city fare. All the big brands and Macy's, Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom. All big, all expensive so we didn't shop there. Driving was a bit crazy downtown though. Pedestrians in San Francisco have no notion of road safety / do not understand what the "no walking" light means. They just happily sashay (yes, here the men sashay) across the street in full-on traffic, oblivious to people, and by people i mean us, staring in disbelief at their idiocricy. Ivan road-raged at them a bit, silently, in the car. It was quite fun though, to be a passenger in a car zooming here and there, dodging the odd greasy pigeon eating stuff in the middle of the road. Very simulator-esque. And of course, San Fran's got all those fantastic hills to zoom up and down on. I wonder if you park 90 degrees to the curb (like you have to) on hills and slam the car door very, very hard, you can make the car roll down the hill and cause a car avalanche with the other parked cars. I don't think Ivan would have liked me to try that.

We went to Berkeley to pick and drop off Nicole. It's so charming! Well some parts of it at least. Some parts are a bit ghetto. There's an ice cream place near the university that makes their own ice cream and ice cream cones with chocolate at the bottom. My goodness... blew my mind. I want that place. They had flavours like brown sugar clove, silver lime and other things i don't remember but all fabulous. It was so pretty! I just sat in there eating my cone and staring about in wonder. I would give up saying "I don't like ice cream" for more of this. Halp. I'm hungry just thinking about it.

On the way home from San Fran, we stopped at Bodega Bay to eat oysters and look at the sea. I wish we had longer to spend travelling. And also more money. To get there, we had to take the coastal highway which was one of the prettiest, most interesting drives ever. There, we had oysters and steamed clams and watched sea birds flap uselessly against the wind. Oh! We saw a sealion and Bean went into raptures. I only saw the ass before it disappeared underwater again and i've seen them before so i wasn't that enthralled but it was still cool! It was quite easily 10 metres in front of us. Then we followed the GPS that led us east across / close to Napa to join up with highway 5. Man... that was easily the best part of the trip. The road wound around hills with orchards and vineyards and forests covered in mist because it was a rainy day. I wound down the window and hung my head out because the air was so fresh. We have very unattractive photos and videos of that. For a moment i thought the air smelled like perfume, but then i realised that i was smelling Bean. haha!

Okay i'm going to eat tacos. So long!