I’ve been back just over a week now after my holiday to San Francisco. It took probably about three years worth of spending but the flight I took was thanks to redeeming frequent flyer points for Virgin Atlantic. My sister ended up coming along because they had a 2-4-1 deal and we both only had to pay the taxes for the flights. Amazing at how much tax you actually end up paying with both of our flights still costing a few hundred quid even with the tax. I wonder how the airlines make any money after all.

Fortunately the rest of the trip was relatively inexpensive since we crashed at our cousin’s place in San Francisco where it was pretty easy to get around by bus. The weather forecast looked ominous from the day we left with heavy rains and grey clouds scheduled all week. What a surprise when we turned up and had blue skies for almost the entire stay. The day we left was cold and drizzly but everything else was perfect. We even spent enough time walking around in the sun that I ended up slightly sunburnt (yes, I’m officially British now!)

Although we had both been to San Francisco before we still did almost all of the things a tourist should do including visiting the Golden Gate Bridge, heading up for a great view to Coit Tower, getting lost in the great expanse of the official Chinatown area and riding one of the cable car trams from the downtown area to the built up tourist hot spot of Fisherman’s Wharf.

We bought a Citypass that gave us entry to some of the sights around town including the amazingly large Science Museum, a cruise around the Bay area and access to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art that was definitely worth visiting.

We also took a segway tour of San Francisco that lasted a good three hours standing upright and a little bit of training to get used to the strange vehicle. The vehicle is classified as a bicycle according to the local laws, so we had a little bit of safety training before being unleashed on the streets as a group where our tour guide took us to see a number of interesting sights around the coastline area. We only had a couple of people falling off their segways but more due to the fact they were playing around than anything about the vehicle itself.

The other significant trip we took was when we hired a car and drove up to Napa Valley where my sister had snagged an elusive booking for the famous French Laundry restaurant. Consistently up in the Top 100 restaurants of the world, the French Laundry is a very well known restaurant and a purveyor of very fine dining also requiring that I bring along a coat for our lunch time meal.

The drive up to wine country was fun. Being a Sunday we encountered little traffic and was a great little road trip. I can’t believe how quickly a single week goes, particularly when you are busy sight seeing and having fun.

I spent the last week of January in Munich, where I was presenting at one of Germany’s largest conferences, OOP Conference. It’s the first time that I’d been to Munich as I haven’t been for any of the crazy Oktoberfest antics and figured I would get there one day. It’s a relatively small town, or at least felt like it to me in comparison to Berlin. One of the things to see there though is the BMW World and museum. I even booked in a plant tour that was well worth it but you’re not allowed to take any photographs.

BMW World sits at the same UBahn station as the Olympic site. It’s very well signed posted and when you emerge from the correct UBahn, it’s literally right in front of you, so you shouldn’t get lost. It’s a really amazing building on the outside. Twisted, curved metal – appropriate for a car marker but softened up in a way you wouldn’t really expect. The BMW World showcases a lot of the cars they sell with a few interactive exhibits and showcasing some of the older cars like the tiny Isetta (pictured below) where people would emerge from the front of the car.

You can sit in many of the cars, except for all the limousine or really high end editions and they even have offers when you can rent a car (for a number of hours), or a number of days right there from the centre.

Munich is also home to the BMW 3, and if you get a chance, make sure you book the factory tour. Seeing the insides of a car manufacturing plant running so efficiently is quite extraordinary. Even though you think that the factory takes up a lot of space, when you look at what they accomplish with it, and how closely some of the robots move relative to fixed ceilings, or other robots, I find it extremely impressive.

Even though I’m not the biggest car fan in the world, I’d still recommend taking a visit out to the BMW Museum that lies across the road from the BMW World. It records the history of the company, from its original roots as an engine manufacturer for aircraft, to being honest about its involvement during the world wars and how its managed to thrive when so many other car manufacturers struggle. It also has a few concept cars that make it very interesting to visit as well as a number of beautifully kept cars you need to locate in the basement such as this BMW 328 Touring Spider car above.