Adventures in the USA: Rachel's Travel Diary

Two months in, I can hardly believe it! I’ve enjoyed relaxing and exploring the local area, alongside weekend breaks with Chris, but I’m now realising I need to start planning the daytrips and overnight trips to the places I hoped to see during my time here. I’ll be doing a lot of planning later this week to make sure I tick off the ‘must see’ items on my list. If anyone has recommendations for things to do as a solo-tripper in San Francisco, let me know!

On Tuesday our dear friend Harry arrived from London for a 2 week stay, so that’s shaken up my routines a little bit, in a good way. We’ve been going out for coffee and light lunches, meeting lots of new people through Harry’s extended network, and visiting new bars and restaurants in the area. I’ve switched spending most of my days in the company of my own thoughts for a lot more socialising. I’m still fitting in plenty of reading though (I got a little bit behind on this month’s book-club read and had to read 200 pages over the weekend!). One of the real gems of the last week though has been enjoying the hot tub and pool a lot more. When something is so readily available, I find it remarkably easy to forget that it exists!

Harry’s arrival on Tuesday afternoon coincided with Chris having another meeting in Santa Monica so we thought it would be nice to meet Harry there to see the sunset and get a burger in one of the many recommended places near the beach. Unfortunately, the weather had other ideas and clouds descended once again, along with a chill to the breeze. It wasn’t a totally wasted visit though as I got to try the Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookie milkshake at Mel’s Diner, we discovered a nice wine, and we did still have excellent cheeseburgers and fries.

I’ve gathered up all the fabric, thread, zips and buttons that I need to make ‘the dress’ now, and I’ve traced over the pattern pieces. I hope to cut the pieces from my fabric later this week, but I expect I won’t actually start on sewing until next week. This pattern will definitely bring some challenges; the pattern requires darts to improve fit, there is an invisible zip to be inserted and there will be more sewing along a curve than I’ve done previously, but I feel confident that it’s within my abilities, I just need to take my time and make sure I read the instructions thoroughly.

On Saturday we took Harry to the Original Farmers Market as we couldn’t decide what to have for lunch and the market offers the freedom for everyone to choose something different. In the end, we all decided on the same place though – Chris and Harry had noodles and I had shrimp fried rice. The sun had returned to the city so after lunch we found a table by the fountain in the Grove and enjoyed an Aperol Spritz and a bit of people watching. It was really lovely to spend time together again which doesn’t happen very often in the UK due to differing schedules – I’m so grateful that we’ve had the opportunity to revive the fun we used to have when we lived together in 2019-2020. Another excitement for the day was that we tried out Waymo for the first time. Waymo is similar to Uber, but using self-driving cars! It really is amazing technology to behold – the way they adapt seamlessly to the ever-changing road layouts and other road-users without human intervention! We don’t have Waymo in the UK yet, and there are still restrictions on them in the US – for example they are not permitted to use the freeways and interstates, and their area of operation is quite limited within the city – but it was a fun experience and I expect we will see more and more of it over of the coming years. We got another one yesterday and it even made an April Fool’s Day joke!

Tuesday was Book Club again and the book of the month was Song of Achilles – set in Ancient Greece and based around the story of Achilles and Patroclus at the time of the Trojan War. Having studied Latin and a little bit about classical civilisation at school, aspects of the mythology were familiar to me but it was interesting to learn more about the Ancient Greek world. As a bonus to the evening, the host’s 17-year old cat called Pete decided to sit next to me for most of the evening for head and chin scratches. The next book is wildly different from this one – a modern day romance novel by Abby Jimenez and it was only released yesterday. I love how being part of a Book Club is introducing me to a range genres that I wouldn’t necessarily choose for myself. It’s making me even more determined to find a book club in the UK, and if I can’t, I’ll just keep following along with the group here, although I won’t be waking up at 2am to join the discussion groups! 

Signing off now from across the pond,

Rachel x