Wednesday 1 - Mission District

another sleepy morning woken only by the desire to hit the streets. we walked and walked and walked today, finally starting to get a grasp on the city we are temporarily residing in. this being-a-traveller business is growing on us slowly. by the time we hit nippon (ya!) we will be well seasoned pro's.

firstly we strolled across downtown looking for notebooks for betty to scrawl her dreams in. you would think in a town that has cars with inbuilt computers so they can reverse-park themselves and a culture that designs longer chocolate cookies so that you can dip them further into your glass of milk that we would find something that betty likes...i am afraid not. we must be some picky ladies!
so we wandered high and low, giggled lots for no apparent reason, caught our first bus and end up wandering the streets in mission district - the latin american end of town. the houses were so beautiful and colourful - everything seemed a bit more run down and interesting here and we thought we might be getting closer to finding the creative side of town. we stumbled and stumbled on, feeling our radar for excitement pick up little signals....but with every turn the houses seemed to just keep going and going. so we gave up in gave into our appetites and found a salvadorian restaurant that served amazing vegetarian pupasas (like a tortilla filled with cheese!) and beans and salad and beer. we felt like kings. we left the restaurant still thinking were lost in suburbia and walked one block and found ourselves in the middle of some latino wonderland of cheap shops, amazing food and second hand wares...oh and of course crazy people...there is about one crazy to every non here in the middle of the city. we wandered along for a fair while and found the most amazing and cheap second hand shop where we got a little too excited and lulu bought a distinctly ugly-fantastic sequined shirt.