Once the mad taxi driver had left we checked in with Cruise America. The guy behind the desk was a dead ringer for Fargo from A Town Called Eureka and mercifully let us skip the orientation video.
It's a bigger unit than the one we rented in Arizona. It has a fixed bed at the rear as well as the over the cab bed. The main thing though is we now have a microwave and so can heat her milk and food. The shower is much better than the farce we have at home too.
I will never drive this thing I hope. It's 24ft long and extremely wide. American roads are big but the lanes looked a little small when we set out on the interstate. I would've been a nervous wreck but J took it in his stride.
We are staying in Larkspur, 10 miles north of San Francisco. The place has a certain resonance for J because it was where his parents stayed when they were here and where his brother and his family stayed on their holiday.
To get to San Francisco from Larkspur you can either take the bus or the ferry. That's a no brainer - imagine arriving into San Francisco across the bay. It's magical because you see such a contrast between the fecund hills of Larkspur with the clouds rolling down them and the skyline of San Francisco -all pointy towers and colourful chaos.
Even better the ferry, unlike the bus, has a bar and we set out on our first trip with a gin and tonic (minus the tonic) and a beer.
We were going to meet a friend of mine, Matt, whom I hadn't seen for ten years. I met him at Edinburgh University in my final year when he was visiting for a year from the States. He now lives in Seattle which to an American is of course only just up the road so he flew down to meet us, for which I am very grateful. All those memories of CC Blooms came flooding back.
J had never met him of course so we did the intros walking along the embarcadero down to Fisherman's Wharf. At dinner Harriet was as good as gold and sat at the table with us munching on a few chips and joining in with her own brand of conversation.
Then it was back home across the bay and our first night in the RV. It felt good to be back here, good to see old friends and best of all to know that it was only the beginning of the holiday.
