Thanksgiving/Trip to San Francisco

Hi folks,

I finally found the time and the motivation to write about my last trip to San Francisco with Henry :-). We went during the Thanksgiving break and we were away for 6 days, visiting 4-5 cities altogether. We also drove around 960 miles during that trip; in average, every American drive around 800 something miles during the Thanksgiving break! Crazy, what?! 800 miles= nearly 1300 kilometers, and that every year. But it was worth driving that far, I can tell you!
We spent Thanksgiving with a Japanese family which Henry knows really well. In the beginning I was a little bit afraid of going to an unknown family to join them in celebrating a family fest but my fears weren't justified; The family was so welcoming, hospitable, and warm-hearted so that it only took me a couple of minutes to get really comfortable around them. And then came the food.Hmmmm yummy in my tummy haha it was really delicious; the turkey, the mashed potatoes, the salads, the stuffing for the turkey...everything tasted really really well!
After Thanksgiving, we continued driving up north in order to reach San Francisco. It is true that it is significantly colder in SF than in LA but still we were lucky so it rained only during one day (saturday) and the rest of the days were just sunny :-)
San Francisco itself is very different from LA; the houses look differently, there are more trees and everything appears to be greener and more lush (that's probably due to the different weather conditions).
In SF, we vistited the Fisherman's Wharf, went to see the Golden Gate Bridge (yay, I finally felt like a real tourist),lombard street, and finally we saw the island Alcatraz but unfortunately we couldn't book a tour for it because it was already sold out in advance :-(
Tip: If you ever go to San Francisco, book the tour in advance! We didnt expect it to be sold out because right now is off-season but still it was very busy.
On the way to San Francisco, we took the famous scenic route 1 which was really beautiful but it takes you a long time because most of the time you cannot drive faster than 50 miles per hour. On the way back, we took the 5 which is a little bit more inland (east) and sometimes you can drive up to 70 mph (normal speed limit: 65 mph) so on the way back we were a lot faster than on the way to it. Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the mountatin/hill we drove up (Henry do you?) but it was the first time when I experienced hail in California! I can only remember that we were about 4000+ feet high at around 11 o'clock pm and it suddenly started to hail...Believe me guys, during this moment, I was really glad that I've bought new tires :-)

So all in all, the trip was really good and I'm glad that we took enough time to go up north because there are so many things to see on the way to it (example: Hearst castle; the only castle I've seen so far here in America and i'm sure it's unique). We also took many cool pictures which yall can see when I'm back in Germany =)

Back to college life: This week and next week we have finals which means that you write your last exam in your subjects. Today I had my yoga exam (yes,hahaha...) and tomorrow I'll have my natural disasters exam, and next week I'll have my Spanish and History exams. In other words, I'm pretty busy with studying for my exams and playing basketball (like always =) ). Today we had again a little bit over 72 degrees, which equals 21-22 degrees celsius, and it is so weird to celebrate Christmas, listen to Christmas songs in the malls, and talk about Christmas presents when it is sunny and warm outside...It just does not seem to be right. My biological clock tells me that something is wrong =)

I just hope that you guys back in Germany, and other cold parts of the world, don't freeze to death and please drive safely on those snowy roads...I know what it feels like to slide and slip on a snow-covered road and to have an accident. Just slow down a little bit and calculate more time for if you wanna go somewhere.

That being said, I look forward to my American Christmas experience and a warm and sunny December and I hope that I'll continue getting A's in my exams...;)

Flo (picture to the right: Nusplingen, the center of the world, haha! Next to Moscow, Madrid, Detroit...)