San Francisco to Sydney - Day 7

Day 7 : San Francisco to Monterey

We travelled today via Greyhound bus, the first of four or five times we'll do this during our trip home. The trip was pleasant enough and uneventful, and we saw parts of California that we'd surely never have otherwise seen, places such as Hayward, Los Gatos, and Watsonville, none of them among the shortlist of Californian tourist meccas.

After today I was left with a very mixed impression of the Greyhound company. The buses, the marketing posters and the professional-looking drivers all suggest a modern company ready to do business in the 21st century. In contrast, the ticketing processes and, especially, the bus stations with their broken neon signs and dirty tile-floors, had a distinctly old-fashioned feel to them.

The result, it seems, is that Greyhound passenger levels are down. For example, our bus today was never more than one-third full. Additionally - and less anecdotally - Greyhound, whose fares are already cheap, are offering incredible two-for-one deals on all round-trips in what appears to be a frantic attempt to attract business. Of course, September 11 can't have helped.

Anyway, we're here, safely, in Monterey, which seems a quiet, seaside city with a distinctly Spanish feel. It was for a time the Mexican and Spanish capital of California, and is now - as we discovered from information down by the harbour - the self-proclaimed "sardine capital of the world". If anyone can tell me any of the world's other fish-related capitals, I'd be fascinated to know.

Tonight, I've been struggling with the Internet connection here. It took some time before I realised that the America Online dial-up number for Monterey is a long-distance call from here. In the US, all this takes is for the phone number that you're calling to be more than twelve miles distant from the phone from which you're calling. So, I'm calling a Monterey number from a hotel in Monterey, yet I'm paying long-distance rates. I think I'm paying about 5c per minute for the calls, but the exact charge per minute will depend on the distance between here and where America Online's modems physically reside. To know precisely what you're paying for a call here in the US, you need to know the time of day that you're making the call and you must have a good feel for distance or a reliable map and a compass.

Originally posted by TC