Day I - San Francisco

I'm loving it!! Straight into my top 3 of best cities in the world!
After a 16 hour journey, we finally got here safely. Mind you, we were 20 minutes late landing as the plane had to circle above San Francisco due to an earthquake that had just hit the city. It was 5.6 on the Richter scale (max. is 9) and was apparently the biggest to hit SF since 1989. Haven't felt any aftershocks but I'm keeping the space under the table available just in case!

I think I've sorted out the jetlag pretty well by trying to stay awake for as long as I could last night and forcing myself to sleep until 2pm UK time. It's now 10.30pm here (5.50am UK) and I'm slightly starting to feel tired, so not bad I say.

Olga and I don't really need to work until tomorrow so we decided to get our walking boots on and go. We started off by taking the famous cable cars to Fisherman's Wharf. The cable cars are so much fun! They are incredibly noisy, flipping dangerous if you ask me, but oh so charming. I read in my Lonely Planet guide they have to change the cables every 75 days because that's how quickly they wear... We walked around the Wharf which is full of sea food, sea lions and, what should be, lovely views, if it weren't for all the fog that was hanging over the bay. We could hardly see the Golden Gate Bridge but had a fantastic misty view over Alcatraz. We then took the ferry to the famous 'Rock' and visited the prison. Got an audio guide told by previous inmates and joined a guided tour. Good stuff and excellent views over San Francisco.

Public transport is great and I feel I'm stuck in a time warp. Not only do the cable cars take you back in time, there's also something called a Rhetoric Street Car. These are the original 'trams' from the '40 and oh my god are they cool?!? You nearly feel you should get your hair done accordingly just to fit in.

We went to the exhibition around 6pm to set up our stand and met one of the translators we work with at Wordtrans. Tomorrow the conference starts, which is when our sales talk starts as well...

After we went to the initial opening gathering (with free food) we went on another cable car ride to see SF by night and to find a bar to celebrate Halloween. We found a pretty cute bar and had a drink there midst carved pumpkins and spider webs. It's funny how every other adult on the street is dressed up here; from a Blues Brother and bumble bee to an Alcatraz escapee and chainsaw-stuck-in-his-head guy. Also saw a little boy dressed as Nemo which was my absolute favourite of the night.

Tired now. Will try to update you with (less) adventurous activities tomorrow.