I left my heart in San Francisco. The journey there was epic 11 hours on the train from LA. But worth it to set out from a station which had a rose garden ! Leather arm chairs and generally designed with the stylish traveller in mind. The train was roomy with a dining car and observation deck. I just very greedily sat and drank in the views. The irrigated fields with migrant workers picking crops. I didn't know pistachios grew on trees. The landscape incredibly arrid. One orchard of trees was incrdibly green but where the irrigation stopped there were tumbleweeds piled up. We trundled past communites of trailer parks, houses with horses out in the gardens, a sinister looking prison high in the desert and past the ocean for a long way.

I loved San Franciso despite arriving exhausted from sharing a room in Santa Monica (I am not good at communal living). I made my way out into the city and found it much hillier than Edinburgh ! Highlights are the architecture of course, City Lights bookshop which I had to give myself a strong talking to and return some books to the shelves. Cable cars of course and I splashed out on dinner at Cafe Zoetrope on the last night.

The city was plastered with Obama posters I travelled up on election day. On the train around 8pm they announced that Obama had got enough electoral votes and a cheer went up.