New Years!

Well, now that I'm back from being abducted by aliens, I can finally get back to blogging! (And with one sentence Justin calmed the angry crowds, restoring peace once more.)

This New Years was spent in downtown San Francisco. (I was told today that I should never refer to downtown San Francisco as "downtown". This apparently causes great confusion here, since every town has a unique and separate "downtown". San Francisco is properly called "the city".)

We took the train into the city, which was a nice ride. It took about an hour and a half, but the scenery was good, and I didn't have to try to find a parking space once we got there. The train was cheap too: only $5 to go in, and it was free on the way back (a nice gesture by the government to keep the drunk people off the roads). This was but the start to a pretty cheap night. All in all I spent under $30, which included two meals.

At first, I was very unprepared for how this was going to turn out. I wasn't sure what kinds of crowds the city would be drawing. But I'm happy to report that I only met "good people". Everyone was in a good mood and friendly. Everyone was chatty and full of spirit (some were probably full of spirits as well).

I lied about only meeting happy people. I met one cranky person. The bus driver. She was none too pleased with the evening. Apparently there were a number of coworkers that decided not to show up for work. This let the remaining buses filled to capacity. And I mean filled. We literally could not fit another person on the bus. The bus driver explained (with very colorful language) that she should be at home right now. She did not deserve this apparently.

But everyone else on the bus was having fun. Everyone was talking about their night and what plans they had. A cute Chinese baby even blew a kiss to me. I think that's the point when I knew the night was going to be a good one.

There were also a large number of street performers. And most of them incorporated fire in one way or another. I'm not entirely sure how legal this was.


We also got a chance to go back and see the sea lions at the wharf. They're always up for a good time of knocking each other off their platforms, yelling for absolutely no reason, and smelling very bad. It was dark, so they were a bit tough to see, but they sure their presence was known by anyone within ear shouting distance.

The night culminated in a very long and very entertaining fireworks display over the Bay Bridge. The streets were packed with all different kinds of people screaming and having a good time. It was a good time had by all. We then dashed quickly back to the trains to catch a ride home. My legs were killing me by that point after having walked a fair bit around the city and not getting a whole lot of sleep the night before. But the fireworks were worth it.