It's largely to do with the fact that there seems to be such amazingly varied environments within a days travel of San Francisco, not to mention lots of exciting activities that come from such a massive bay area and coastline.

I'm sure London and by extension the rest of England are nice to visit, but I want proper mountains and national parks, not the wussy ones we have here. I want proper beaches, and I want to be able to take advantage of my very strong English accent :)

The grass is greener here but only because of the bloody rain.