So, yesterday I was supposed to get together with Sosi, Maryam and Elly in San Fransisco, bur Sosi decided she had better things to do, which was probably just a lie to avoid me.

So, the three of us meet up in the city and wander around Chinatown aimlessly for a while, with Elly writing cryptic and secret notes every chance she got. I did stop to droll over some swords at one point, which she made a note of. I suspect that her version of events will make me appear to be some sort of psycho. We went through the markets in Chinatown, and saw someone beat a fish to death with a big mallet. You can't pay for entertainment like that. I also saw a tray full of what appeared to be brains on one stall, but they wouldn't let me stop to check.

There was also an old chinese gentleman softly singing to the girl in a calendar as we walked past. He sang quite well, but it was very hard not to laugh out loud as we wnt past.

Then we headed off to Japantown and spentmost of the time there in (of all places) a stationery store. Which was suprisingly fun. Especially trying to guess what some of the things were when they were only labelled in Japanese.

We spent some time wandering around on the cable cars, which is always fun, and made our way to the Rainforest Cafe (which we only went to because Sosi had wanted to go there. And then she couldn't be bothered), which wasn't as bad as I was expecting, although our waiter (or "Safari Guide" as they call them there) did insist on trying to give me more food than I wanted to by willfully mishearing "half-rack" as "whole-rack". And I know my accent isn't that bad. And me and Maryam had both brought toys to play with while we waited for the food, and which Elly had great fun with.

We also played with all the toys in the shop there as well. I mean ALL OF THEM. Every single one. I even managed to frighten Elly with a glow-in-the-dark bat.

We went over to Ghirardelli Square for sundaes after the meal, but we had to stop on the way because we found a beach. We spent about half an hour standing about a foot from the surf line and just staring out to sea (well, across the bay, really). That was good. And somehow we'd managed to find a spot where the surf came about 5 foot further up the beach on each side of us than it did where we were. That was fun.

When we finally headed over to Ghirarelli's, we found Andrea's Fountain in the middle of the square (See? She really should have been there!), and we looked around the chocolate shop there. They had this HYOOJ 10 lb bar of chocolate, which I wanted to buy, until I realised that it weighed fully one quarter of everything I packed for a several month round-the-world tour. Then I realised that it was just too big.

More cable car rides took us back to the BART, and I needed to push it round one of the corners when it ground to a halt. Well, OK, it wasn't just me. But it's the first time I've done that, and I thought it was worth mentioning.

winter'So that's 3 American cities I've acted as tour guide in"mute