First impressions.
So I get to the airport, find the bus easy enough, and set off for Marin county, north of the bay. On the way I make friends with my bus seat neibour who informs me that the bus route goes through san francisco and over the golden gate bridge. My response: “Awesome!”. I’d been in California only half an hour and I was going to see one of the major sites. Or at least I would have done, if I could see through fog.

Little did I know the sf fog is a thing. None of the pictures showed it, but the whole city is frequently smothered in a thick sea mist. So no golden gate bridge for me. I could see some of the neighbouring cars, but mostly it was just cloud. Sad times.

Marin county.
Really pretty. Hellish to get to on public transport, but very pretty hills. Went on a hike through them and started to feel like I was on Endor (the forest moon where the ewoks are in Return of the Jedi), which is when I learned that some of those scenes were actually filmed here. So if you want to run around pretending you’re han solo fighting storm troopers (which I absolutely did not do) it’s a good place to go.

Beach day!!!
Went to the beach ready for come californian sun and sand. It was covered in fog.

San Francisco.
Cool city. Chinatown: awesome. Golden gate park: Awesome. Ocean beach: double awesome. Saw a beyonce flash-mob. Went to a chocolate factory. Free concert in a park.

San Diego.
Took a rideshare there (basically found a person online who was driving that way and agreed to split petrol). Had a rideshare back for Sunday, but the person got caught in customs coming over from mexico for smuggling. Booked another rideshare for the monday, but the person’s car broke down. Ended up taking the bus.
On the plus side SD is really cool. Nice beaches, great fish tacos, and I got to visit my favourite person in the world so that was nice.

Tips if you ever come here:
De-Cals. Take them! Decals are basically student run courses that you can get credit for. Currently I’m taking one called ‘war games’. The course is essentially playing risk, capture the flag and various other games. Oh the things you can do in the political science department.

Finally, keep your eyes out. There’s a lot of strange things to run into. Today I saw a clown on campus for little to no reason. Yesterday there was a gentleman hugging a tree. Last week I ended up in a nerf gun spy game. Just keep an eye out and you’ll be sure to run into some interesting situations.