28th July - San Francisco

Well. Life certainly is not boring. And it's days like these you really wish you had normal hearing so you can sort things out yourself.

It started last night. I hit the sack at 8pm as I was simply exhausted. Mike went out and searched for a beer and dinner and walked the streets. He felt someone brush up against him, but didn't think anything of it.

Until.... this morning. Where's my wallet??

We unpacked everything. Went through every pair of shorts and trousers. Every nook and cranny. Every drawer and pocket. We unpacked and repacked everything. No wallet to be found. It was lost - good and proper. $250 USD cash, Credit cards, Drivers license - G O N E!

We found out where the police station was so, instead of going on our city wide tour, we walked down 5 blocks to the police and wrote up a report for insurance purposes. There is no hope of it being handed in, because of the number of homeless around the area he was.

We told the police we needed help to ring to cancel the credit card as we couldn't hear on the phone. Not a problem. He wrote everything down - fortunately Mike had written his card number in a note book so we had all the information. Unfortunately due to budget constraints the station couldn't make a toll call so they told us to go to the Southern Station on 850 Bryant. I asked if we should take a taxi - but they said no - walk it.

So we walked it. After an hour we finally found it, but not before asking several people if we were on the right track. We were but were told to 'watch our backs as it's unsafe'. Lovely.

The police are behind glass and you talk to them via a phone. We couldn't do that so we told them we were deaf and they passed us pink paper through the glass with written messages. We were told to go to the 4th floor to room 454 and ask for the Robbery Inspector. Before we could get to the lifts, we had to go through a security check like the airport!!

We were seen by a Sergeant Scott Warnke. He was simply brilliant, and went well out of the way to help us. He spent a good two hours with us, ringing NZ for us and cancelling the credit card, and then organising a replacement with Mastercard International that will be delivered to Mike tomorrow morning between 8 and 10am at the hostel. He will be able to use the card, but not at any ATM to withdraw cash.

This lovely police officer then DROVE us down to Fisherman's Wharf afterwards so we could spend the afternoon down there. Now that is really going above and beyond and we are truly truly grateful for his help.

We then spent the afternoon at Fisherman's wharf wandering around. We had lunch at the Boudin Bakery = clam chowder in Sourdough bun - it was wonderful = slurp - yum. We watched this duck-like diving bird dive under the water and attack 3 seagulls from underwater which was hilarious. The seagulls complained bitterly!

Onto Pier 39 and took photos of the sealions, then wandered around the shops. Caught the cable car back up to Union Square then walked back to the hostel. Got back about 8pm. So all in all a good day, apart from the initial panic from Mike this morning!! I kept Mike calm though - re-iterating that there was absolutely nothing we could do about it but sort it out.

City tour tomorrow now - at least the lost wallet gave us something different to do :)