Hey folks, last night we touched down in Canada for the first time. At a little over 2 hours it was a pretty short flight from San Francisco to Vancouver. This time we were prepared to not getting any food on board (that's normal in North America now). Not like when we flew from New York to San Diego (5 1/2 hours…) in the evening with an empty stomach since we expected to be served dinner on board – that was quite a disaster.

In San Francisco we were able to spend some time with Ryan – he used to work at the EF school in Santa Barbara – and his family. He's married to a Japanese, and they've got two cute kids. We really enjoyed being with them. Btw, if you think your English skills could do with some improvement, you should check out Ryan's company ESL Video. They offer extraordinary and authentic video-based lessons.
Other than that, we didn't do much in San Francisco. We toured all the touristic places during our several visits to SF in 97/98. Apart from those, however, we could recommend two venues: Twin Peaks at night and the Exploratorium. Our friends Aya & Tim, whom we spent some time with in San Jose and SF took us up to Twin Peaks on Sunday night. The place offers a magnificent view over the city. Very nice!

Although we've only spent less than half a day in Vancouver, we feel that people here are even more friendly (to tourists?) than they are down in California.