Haight street and Sutro baths

Deedra and her two room mates took us out for pancakes in the morning at a nice breakfast place down the street from their place. After that Deedra showed us Haight street which is said to be the place where the Hippie movement of America started in the 60s and that is still packed with a bunch of the last survivors... It is a very colorful and interesting place with a healthy mix of new and old shops, cafes bright people. We walked up and down the street looking through the shops and enjoying the vibe that reminded me strongly of the "Schanze" in Hamburg. We went back home for a little rest before Deedra had to go to work and gave us a lift to downtown where we checked out the big mall for our final Christmas arrangements. It was crazy big there and and very hard to find anything in between all that stuff but at least we figured out what we wanted to give each other. Yay!
Later we walked to the fisherman's wharf which was quite a bit away but it was a nice walk with all the Christmas decorations and lights everywhere. We had a coffee while we waited for Deedra to finish her shift at home before she picked us up and we drove home. At night we went to a party at a friends place which was fun and the people we met there were really cool. Some of them seemed so very Australian and they reminded me of my friends back there.
The next day Deedra and her room mate Megan took us out for a hike to the Sutro baths, which was a large swimming pool complex in SF in the 19th century that had burned down and remains as ruins right at the ocean. The weather was awesome and we had a lot of fun on that hike. The trail led us up the cliffs from where we had a great view over ocean beach (and its waves that were pumping that day) and later on we could see the GGB and the entrance to the bay. We had bought some really nice bread from a small Russian store that we had found on the way which we ate close to the water with some nice Swiss cheese.
The ruins of the baths were really cool. It must have been a huge complex and it was right by the ocean so you could relax inside and see the waves break against the outside... Over the years the water had formed a tunnel into the rocks behind the baths through which you could walk all the way across to the other side of the cliffs which was very cool. After a nice long break we went back to Deedra's place because she had to get ready for work and we had decided to switch sleeping locations (after all we were blocking half of the girls' living room).

The crew: Bekki, Megan and Deedra

The Sutro baths

This is how the baths looked in the 1920s

Our friend Lauren, who we had met in Long Beach had given us the number of a good friend who lives in SF in case we needed a place to stay and he told me on the phone that it was no problem for us to come any time and stay with him and his room mates for a while. He didn't live far away from where we were and so we packed our stuff in the evening and backpacked to his house in Randolph street, probably the coolest place in the whole of San Francisco.