DAY 17 - Stanford, Muir Woods and Sausalito - 17th Dec

What do I think of Stanford? Not much really. The campus is massive just like every single thing in this country. The main buildings are nice but the prevalent feeling is the same type of shallowness which engulfs this entire country. Oh yeah and did I mention that the Law building is massively ugly just like every other law building in the world. You think Architects hate lawyers? Anyhoo, Stanford is like UNSW with oodles more money. It's wannabe sandstone but it still doesn't quite reach it. Take Oxford for example, it doesn't have a majestic boulevard leading up to it...but it's quaint and history seeps through every brick.

Then we drove right through the city over the Golden Gate bridge to Muir Woods to see redwood trees. The road down to the woods was insane. Winding and unfenced, even though we were in the right lane, it was still hella scary. My aunt was driving a Toyota 7-seater family van with front wheels which needed some serious realigning. On the way up I almost crapped my pants cause, 2 inches to the right and we would have ended 30 meters down into the woods. My aunt looked at the trees and remarked, don't worry those will stop us a bit.

Muir woods itself was cold and wet but fantastic, I only wish it was more sunny there was nearly as much light as I'd like. Thus all the pictures are a bit dull and feel like an episode of the x files. We took a bit of a different road on the way back and passed a house downhill between the woods and the beach. It was so brilliantly peaceful, it be really cool to have a holiday house like that, just away from humanity.

At dusk we headed down to Sausalito right near the Golden Gate. It's a very quaint seaside tourist town with lots of solo commercial gallery stores. Really nice, but I only walked a bit in fading light, but it was really relaxed

Then we drove back home down through san fran once more and used the San Mateo bridge, its so insanely long it took like 15min driving across it. It crosses one of the widest sections of the san fran bay between Hayward and San Mateo. Google tells me that it's about 8 miles long, that's a 10.8km long bridge, insane.

I spent most of the day with a map in hand directing my Aunt across the San Francisco Bay Area. It was fun yet totally frightening everytime she was on the phone, thinking or distracted, she stopped in a middle of a freeway or makes a wrong turn. But I've discovered that I'm a person who is quite good at navigation, I belong on the Amazing Race.

pictures here