Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Like, y'know, shyeah.

I'm posting this from a cafe (okay, it's a Starbucks but they at least have convenient wireless Internet access) in Berkeley, California as I'm on holiday in this part of the world for the next couple of weeks.

It's my first visit to this country and it's proving kind of interesting as the USA, so far, is one country where it seems all the stereotypes are true. The cars are indeed huge, the petrol is indeed absurdly cheap (although $2.00 a gallon is being seen as an indication of forthcoming Armageddon by a lot of folk here) but with this being the Bay Area one stereotype is inaccurate - the public transport's actually pretty good. Although I've never been here before, I've had so much US culture and tradition injected into my consciousness by simply having been alive for 30 years that nothing's entirely new or alien.

The one downer is that my hotel room (which to be fair to the hotel was the only one they had free when I checked in last night) doesn't really match the impression given by the hotel website. Not much of a surprise, but this one not only has a view only of a fire escape and a brick wall but is also part of the fire escape route itself - an emergency pull outside the room just opens the door, so there's no internal lock or anything. Oh, and the radiator hisses loudly and woke me up in the night. So I decided to test out the much-vaunted American notion of customer service and asked for a better room - we'll see what they've done for me when I get back later..

The flight out sucked, as flights generally do, so I guess I should draw a veil over that. The trip into town was fantastic, though - BART is fast, cheap ($4.95 to downtown is pretty good) and no hassle to use. I recommend not bothering taking a cab from the airport if your destination's served by BART (and before any angry cab drivers start wishing me harm, I should point out that recommendation was originally made to me by a San Francisco cab driver).

I think I like San Francisco - although pretty big and intimidating at first sight, it's got everything the dedicated transport wonk should want - on-street trams, a metro, regional rail connections, and even trolleybuses and antique cable-hauled streetcars.

Oh, and I've already heard people walking down the street having conversations consisting of "And I'm, like, shyeah, and he's like, duh..". See? All the stereotypes really are true!

Posted by mpk at March 28, 2004 11:34 PM | TrackBack