San Francisco - part 1

The next day wasn't so amazing. We got to the airport early but United airlines didn't tell us you needed to pay US$20 per bag when we booked the tickets so had to pay a bit of money to them. Their machines wouldn't work properly for check in (it's ALL self check in) and the people that were around were VERY unfriendly and unhelpful and just made the whole experience terrible.
On arrival into San Francisco we hadn't booked a place to stay and walked around dragging our bags about trying to find somewhere. After trying for a few hours we found an overpriced and horrible hostel.
We ended up just going to the local library to borrow some internet and went to see the movie Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, which was a great movie but a bad choice for the day because it was very violent and we were feeling very drained.

Day 2 in San Francisco was a bit better. We moved to a better hostel and went down to the Embarcadero for a walk and to find some good chocolate places we had heard about. In Ghiradelli Square they were having a chocolate festival, so we perused their wares.
That night we went to a bar called Zeitgeist. It was great! Brilliant beers and brilliant food. Liz from work recommended it as she has been there when she lived in San Francisco. I found a nice Bay Area porter to drink while Esther found a nice pear cider. The burgers and bratwurst was to die for as well. Good place.

Day 3 we caught the bus to the Haight Ashbury district to soak up some hippy vibes. In the end were were kinda underwhelmed by it all. Admittedly we don't know that much about the area, but it seems these days it's mostly just shops trying to cash in on something that once was great, but is now so integrated into popular culture that the message is very very lost. Good part about that area is that Amoeba records is there. It's pretty much the best music store I've ever been to. It's a converted bowling alley, so where all the lanes used to be is now filled with CD's. I had a field day and bought 14 cd's and 3 dvd's to add to the ones I bought in Chicago! My luggage is very full now!
After a quick rest we hopped on the BART and went to the Oakland Raiders vs San Diego Chargers NFL match. Upon arrival the atmosphere was brutal. Raiders fans were screaming and chanting before they even made it through the gates, a lot of whom had spent the afternoon Tailgating and drinking a lot of beer. Once inside it was even worse, with every opposition supporter being booed and sworn at from quite a distance and every fan chanting and yelling about anything and everything. I think the section we were seated in was one of the more rough sections as we had police come and stand at the bottom of it to make sure nobody did anything stupid. The Raiders went on to lose in the dying seconds of the match, which was a little disappointing, especially as they had a touchdown denied earlier in the game.