A treat for you all...only 2 days after Stu blogged, it is now my turn to do the same :)

The first thing I must note, is that Stu missed out on one of the best things that we did when we were in San Francisco...or I should say that we did on the 1st when we were not up for doing much else! We went to see Avatar in 3D. Now the film was excellent. Nothing too amazing in terms of the storyline, but in 3D it is just so great. It was also our 1st 3D movie and i must say, it is something that I will be doing again :)

So, where did we get too..ah yes, our final day in San Francisco. Today we went to Alcatraz, the US prison for a number of years. It was really really good. We saw where they were all kept and what the conditions were like. Even with the sun shining the place seemed all cold and nasty. Not very warm at all!!
We were heading to Mountain View that day to stay with firends of Agnes - Fay, Bruce and Connor. Unfortunately, we saw the train we were meant to get pull away while we were about 5 minutes away...or an hour later we got the next train and arrived a little later than planned in Mountain View.

Mountain View is a lovely place, which we explored the next day. Fay and Bruce lent us their bikes and so we heading along a nice cycle path to the Bay. On the way back we went through where all the GoogleOffices were. Lovely place to work...I wonder if they are interested in Scottish Lawyers out here?!

We hired a car for two days...
On the 1st day we went North to Napa Valley - Californian wine all round. What a wonderful time I had tasting a huge variety of different wines. It was a huge learning curve as I had never actually done wine tasting before. But I now know what I should be looking for and have a better idea of what the differences are!
On our way back...we attempted to find some crazy golf - but even though we could see it from the highway - we could not find it!

The next day, we took the car South to Monterey and Carmel. This was a wonderful drive. Between the two towns is the Famous Pebble Beach Golf Course - and the "17 mile drive". This drive goes along the shore taking in some of the most gorgeous views of the Pacific. It also goes past amazing houses. Something to aim for...there were a few on sale. Nothing under $2.5million and I think the most expensive was around $24 million...but then it did look out onto the Pebble Beach Course itself.
So Stu died and went to golf heaven...at Pebble Beach there was the practice green for putting. So he managed to putt a few balls on that. Apparently it was running really well and he was putting well :)
Then we went to see the 1st tee and the starter there took our photos at the start. And because we were all the way from Scotland he gave Stu a bag tag from pebble beach. Normally you have to play the round to get this - Stu is over the moon :)
After the excitement of Pebble Beach, we headed to the Aquarium - it was good. I liked the touching pools - particularly the Rays...and also the sea otters - they were really lovely!

Evenings at Mountain View have also been very nice. Bruce is a fantastic cook and the company has been great!

Today is our last full day in Mountain View - we returned the car and then while we were getting ourselves sorted for heading out there was an EARTHQUAKE...it was 4.2 on the scale which is not the biggest, infact the locals say it was rather small. But it was a good first earthquake i thought. No damage though!
We borrowed the bikes again and headed to crazy golf that was near us. 36 holes later Stu won the first and I won the 2nd - unfortunately we did not get a decider game...YET

Off to San Diego tomorrow....first plane in a while!