Andrea doesn't like cricket

It's official, Andrea doesn't like cricket. We were having a lazy afternoon in this lull between Christmas and the new year. We were watching TV(i hate to say it, but probably Dawson's Creek) and reading the paper. Yes, Andrea can multi-task very well, not like me at all. Anyway the front door made a noise, so Andrea went to check up on it and opened the door. She noticed something drop down from above(the ceiling not heaven), but couldn't see anything on the floor. She then closed the door and returned to the sofa for more TV and newspaper reading. After about 20 mins(!) she had finished reading the paper and put it down only to discover that a cricket was sat on her leg. This must of been the thing that fell down.

Now since coming to Australia (and the build up beforehand), Andrea has had the "fear" when it comes to bugs here. According to the world of Andrea, everything is poisonous and has great big fangs. Andrea screamed a little(well freaked out really) and demanded that i rescue her. I threw it out of the window where it flew off to find some other sucker to attach to.

Back to the cricket anyway. This thing was a bit freaky as it was like the picture on the link but massive. I think it was around 3 to 4 inches long, and the antennae coming out of it's head were as long as it's body.

Since then i've walked into a spiders web walking back from town, which spooked me a little too...

...I should really stop listening to Andrea on these matters ;) I mean what next, aussie ants the size of cars?!?!

Christmas Day in Manly

Christmas Day was definatly a different day here in Australia. I have to say waking up to Sunshine is strange. Sunshine was not forecasted for today so it was a pleasant surprise.

As Joesphine has disappeared to her boyfriends now, we have the flat to ourselves which we have managed to make a completely mess of as we have just dumped every thing everywhere. Simon and I are not tidy people and together we are even worse.

This year we set each other a budget to spend on each other, and we werent to go over it (though Simon did) and of course it cant be anything that wont fit in the suitcase (ignoring what i bought Simon as his main present :-))

I bought Simon:
Bodyboard
DS Game
A PC game (which is the wrong one so need to take it back) - which bought him a pair of running trainers instead.
Lots of Sweeties.
Twigglets
Pair of Flip Flops
Pair of googles
a bommerang
a keyring with a bomerang on it.
2 cds
a blowup globe

Simon bought me:
a pair of really posh comfy flip flops
a voucher to get a manicure and pedicure
a voucher to buy a bikini at Roxy ( i think im driving Simon mad moaning about the prices)
sim card storage thingy
chocolate bar
toblerone
a cd
more sweets

You see there is 1 big difference between me and Simon. Im a quantity person and Simon is a quality person. I buy him a cheap pair of flip flops he buys me a really posh pair.

Once we opened the pressies we peeled the veg (very english) and then instead of visiting the family etc. We went to the beach and attacked the enormous waves with Simons new Body board which (remembering im a quantity not a quality person), caused us both to rip our stomach as it rubbed on our bellys and when we left it out in the sun it started to get airpockets in it so that kind off changed the whole aerodynamics of the board in the sea as it wasnt smooth therefore didnt quite slide over the waves. Very good fun though.

Once we had finished on the beach we went back to the flat and Simon was head Chef and made us a beautiful Roast turkey dinner(very english) which considering he has never even made a roast before he did amazingly. We were able to eat this on the balcany looking out to the sea. We sat there with our Reindeer Hats on, my flashing earings, our Christmas napkins and our San Francisco/Hawaii place mats. It was really really nice.

After that we did the usual english thing of sitting on the sofa and moaning that we had eaten to much and didnt really move till it was time to ring home. Which completely frustrated me as the day i wanted to speak to everyone the connection was unbelievable poor. I hated that as it made me miss home but i also can apprecate what a great day we had and i wouldnt have changed it for the world.

Preparing for Christmas in Manly

The blogs are getting more and more infrequent, i apologise but as our days consist of sunbathing, or job hunting or shopping we dont have to much to report at the moment. Anyway:

Its Christmas Eve now, and we are currently in between walking down the steep hill to the shops to get some food for tomorrow and wrapping each other pressies.

The weather is not great at the moment which is a shame therefore we have decided that whilst we will walk down to the beach and see whats happening we can have the traditional Christmas dinner which we are going to eat on our balcony.

So far me and Simon are sat here with our Reindeer headgear getting into the Christmas Groove. I might put my flashing earings on. :-)

Ive just re-decorated the tree (its one of the really cheap plastic trees). Scotty and Ingrid and Joesphine left it here and as Joesphine has disappeared to her boyfriends for Christmas, ive moved the tree and added a pink feather boa to the tree to add my pink touch to it :-). It has all the pressies around the bottom of it now.

Yesterday we were going to go for a walk but we ended up walking down to Manly Beach and never got any further. They were hosting a beach volleyball competition. They was about 10 courts (or whatever they are called) but it was really amusing because it was in fancy dress. The most amusing to us was 7 girls dressed up as the dancers from that aerobics video, ie in leatards bending over playing against the Karate boys. The girls were really bad, i think they just joined in for the fancy dress competition and were just posing and dancing. The other amusing one was the beach dudes dressed up in womens swimming cossies. These guys were really funny as they didnt take the competitiion seriously and were to buy kicin the ball, heading it, bending over in the cossies. Needless to say unlike the girls they got to the final (there was about 30 teams altogether) and lost with the last ball. But even in the final they were still messing around. At one point they climbed on top of each other and were trying to get the ball like that. Not once did they ever get serious. The winner of the fancy dress party was the Ninja Turtles with the chickens at a close 2nd. The only downside of this comp was that it rained on the final which made me and Simon feel more Christmasy.

Its a big weird seeing people sat on the beaches with Christmas hats on. Its a bit weird.
Ive also discovered that there is a serious lack of Christmas card shops. so i suspect buying cards is not a big thing here. Perhaps me and Simon should open a shop here.

Our 10mins of claim to fame.

Simons view of our 10mins:

Lets face it, for those of you who saw this, it was wet and cold ! I mean, we come all the way to Aussieland to do the gmtv christmas thingy hopes of sun and sand, and it rains on the day where we could prove it too you all.

Well, the whole event got off to a flying start when i bent down to get something out of my rucsack and some over enthusiastic pom accidently kicked me in the head whilst he was trying to hop over the fence. Anyway, it never hurt, although Andrea said that there was quite a "crack" sound.

There must of been about 60 brits turn up for this event, the producer said that if the sun was out then it's usually around 200. 60 was still a fair bit though when it comes to getting squashed, and most of the shots we we're blocked by 6 footers, so you would of only seen two bouncing heads at the begining. Due to the fact that there was just a small number of us they were scraping the barrel for different messages. The producer amused Andrea. She was the most tactless person we've ever met. She asked the audience if somebody had an ill family member and would they like to come up and have an interview to send a message. Some bloke stuck his hand up and it was almost a "Great!, come on up then" from the producer...sheesh! The presenter was a bit of a diva, the camera woman didn't stop eating, and the director was always trying to come up with christmas carols for us to sing. After we did one of the carols, the director indicated that the next link wouldn't be for another 50 mins, that was the cue for most of the audience to leave :) .. Not us die hard wannabies though! They then got everyone up and spread us out to make it look like there was loads of us. (did it work?) The producer asked for the people with signs to be at the front. Cue Andrea's Christmas sprout!
I'm not sure how we looked or anything like that 'cause we were on the otherside of the camera, our internet here is also too bad to look at the clip on their website too. Anyway, we had our moment of fame. For me personally, i'm glad they never interviewed us as we would of just jibbered our words and then really looked like a couple of planks :)

http://www.gm.tv/index.cfm?articleid=23941&cachedarticleaction=streamingpopup&display=video

Andreas view of our 10mins:

Well i did it. I managed to get a picture of a sprout on tele. For all of you wondering what i am talking about. Its traditional on Christmas Day that i have 1 sprout on my plate and its traditional that i dont eat it. Mum (and Simon this year) try to hide it under other veg but i still manage to sniff it out and push it aside.

The gmtv link above has a cracking view of Simon, but i have to admit even i dont recognise myself in it. From what people have been saying though im more on the real tv then the internet :-) so i am actually more famous then Simon.

I reckon if me and Simon had been brave enough we could have got on the camera and sent a message but between the 2 of us we are just 2 shy.

If you watch the vid there is a family from Stroud as well which Simon later had a chat with which was funny. Come all the way to Sydney and Simon meets people from the next village. The women said she recognised Simon but he said to me it was because he has the signature Gardner forehead. :-)

17/12/2006 Sundays ahhhhhh

Okay its only a week before Christmas, if i was at home now i would be racing round trying to buy presents and stressing. Here in Sydney, our Sunday was spent leisurely getting up, walking down to the Botanical Gardens, and laying the towel out and watching the world go by. We took our books down but really they werent necessary. We could sit and admire the Opera House, Sydney Bridge, the big boats going past, the speed boats taking people on thrill rides, the parrots in the trees above us, the 3 weddings that were on in the park, the japanese with the tripods, or the 3 girls posing for pictures in christmas outfits. It was certainly entertaining.

As the weeks have progessed me and Simon have spent a lot of time together and we have learnt to understand each others little quirks. The noticable one at the moment is that Simon is really anal about which route to take to get somewhere and we have to backtrack exactly to get back to where we started. Im a bit more casual and willing to get lost, so whilst we have walked a number of times down to woolomoloo and the gardens one route Simon insists on walking back the same way. I finally convinced Simon to follow me today a differnt route back (i didnt want to climb some stairs if im truthful) he grudgingly followed me while we went up all these different roads mumbling behind me that he would like to get back to the room before dark and perhaps we need to turn round and start again. And did i get us back to the hotel, yep and there was no stairs. Simons has now got to learn that sometimes i know where i am going, its just sometimes i dont and get myself into a mess.

GMTV on Wednesday

Have a read of this:

http://www.gm.tv/index.cfm?articleid=18024

We are going to go down to Mrs Maqueries Point on Wednesday evening which will be live on tele Wed morning in England so look out for us. You know quite well though it will be me trying to make a prat of my self and Simon walking off in the opposite direction because he is embarrassed.

and no i wont have a sprout with me. Im not prepared.

I don't like cricket

I love it really, but the Aussies heads are so large at the moment that Pom bashing will soon take over their national sport. Needless to say, i don't like cricket at the moment ;) That leads to another problem that might arise when we come to leaving our flat in Manly: it co-insides with when the cricket comes to Sydney. hrm.

Anyway, since Andrea's post we've done a lot of walking. We've pretty much walked round the city. The botanical gardens are our favourite at the moment, a lovely place to while away the hours in the sunshine with views of the harbour to boot. :) They also have parrots flying about and tonnes of really big bats :) Bondai beach (or Bonzai as Andrea keeps saying), is quite nice but there are other better beaches nearby. You just can't read a book when you're getting sand blasted from the winds that whip up there. I suppose it's better than getting really rained upon though ;) We also wandered round the opera house one day through circular quay and over to darling harbour. Bars and restaurants are littered across this stretch of the city but they are chock-a-block with Christmas doos.

On one of the days that it has rained here we went to Taronga Zoo. It's a pretty good zoo as it concentrates mainly on the stupidly named animals from around Australia... Dingos, Platypuses, wombats, possums, dugongs, chazwazzas. Of course the jewel in the crown is the Koala bear, an animal so slothlike that you almost fall asleep watching it :) We paid the extra to go into an enclosure with a couple of koalas and get our photo's taken with them. Also watched them getting fed. Animals really don't get much cuter than a koala bear :)

We also saw some wallabies "havin' it off" and a chimpanzee picking his bum and eating it...nice. When it came to the spider exhibit i clocked that we had already seen some of the spiders around the zoo...loose !

Life in Sydney so far and our new address

Well its been a strange couple of days. After being ill on the first day (bad stomach again) and feeling generally sorry for my self things are definately on the up. Word of warning to anybody. If you ever decide to visit sydney DO NOT arrive when Robbie Williams is playing in concert and DO NOT arrive in December. Sat at the airport on a Saturday night trying to get a hotel is pretty disheartening when you ring up everywhere and its fully booked up or its say £300 a night. Luckily they had the internet at the airport and we managed to get a hotel for £45 a night and to be honest we struck gold. Its a simple hotel around the corner for the Kings Cross train station and has got the tiniest bathroom you will ever go in. Tim you would not have a chance at sitting on the loo you knees wouldnt fit. In fact me and Simon can only just sit down and we are diddy. But appart from that its really good, we can even if we stand on our tip toes see the bridge.

The time so far has consisted at laughing at Simons head as it peeled, and grumbling that Sydney reminds me of Manchester when its sunny. Kings Cross is not a nice area to stay around and as we have been concentration on trying to find somewhere to live instead of taking the sights in its just felt like a normal city. We found Nandos yesterday though to cheer me up.

In regard to us living in Sydney. We are in a Chicken and Egg situation at the moment. We dont think its worth getting tied up in 3 months accommodation when we dont know whether we can get jobs but obviously we need somewhere to stay whilst we get a job. The fact is that Sydney is fully booked up hotels wise for Christmas and New Year, therefore we have been debating about gettig out of Sydney for Christmas, staying in a campervan, or something. Anyway the something is that we decided to flat share for a couple of weeks. It seems that there is people that have got flats here in sydney that are going home for Christmas and want someone to pay their rent. Therefore yesterday we arranged to see 3 places. The first place meant we had to jump on the Ferry to a place called Manly. We were woo'ed by this from the start. (Sydney is getting better and better) and we found this flat that belonged to a couple that they shared with a girl. They were going away for 3 weeks. The flat was okay but the view was amazing, i can sit on the veranda and see the sea. heaven. The area seemed really nice as well. The couple Scott and Ingrid explained that they were going away but wanted to tell the flat mate that it was a friend and his girlfriend going to take over the room so they were keen to make sure we looked normal, they commented on the fact that we looked like a respectable mature couple (should i take offense by this :-) ) . We left them and headed for the 2nd viewing, debating on the ferry journey back whether to just take this one or hold out to the rest as we hadnt seen any before. The sign came when the 2nd one rang up and said the room was now taken before we even got there, we took this as the push we needed and rang the 1st one back up and said we would take the room. They didnt give us a yes or no answer on the phone at that stage and said they would get back to us after they had spoken to their room mate. We decided therefore to continue on to the 3rd viewing instead which was near Bondi Beach which we wanted to go and see anyway. Needless to say the 3rd viewing cancelled on us as well, so we were relieved that we hadnt waited before ringing up about the 1st one we just had to hope that they wanted us. Which luckily we did. We are now signed up ready to move in on the Tuesday 19th December and if you want to send us Christmas cards you can :-) you can send them to:

5/20 Ocean Road
Manly 2095
New South Wales
AUSTRALIA

We met the couple for a drink last night as Scott wanted to make sure we had our stories straight in regard to how we know them. Simon and Scott have a mutual friend called Dave (it was cos Scott reminded me of my Dave - ie he had blond hair) and they had met in London and Dave and Scott used to work together in the building trade. Having said this, Scott was a really good guy he wrote up a little contract for the money and showed us ID etc and so it all seemed above board. He even said Simon could use his surf board as he had beginners boards in the garage and we can also use his bike. I can imagine us being friends with them when they get back.

Jobs and some Sightseeing is the next thing to do.

ooo and the geeky side of me and simon have been wooed by the public transport and the fact that the trains are double deckers, thats cool. London should take note.

In regard to food we had a really nice Italian the other night, it was a small walk away from Kings Cross and it was in a restaurants where you bring your own drink, so when we were sat down i ran over to the off license across the road, and whilst i was in the off license it absolutely chucked it down, wheres Trudies rain mac when i needed it. Now apparently you get more wet if you run through rain, have you ever tried to convince your self that if you walk though rain you wont get wet its really difficult. Needless to say i was wet and Simon laughed at me. (it was my own fault because it was me that wanted a bottle of wine)

28 err 29-Nov-06: Back to the future!

Trying to figure out how to slot this in to the other posts, but in the end i think i'll just publish it anyway :)

The flight from Hawaii to Fiji was an interesting one. Pretty much all day was taken up travelling so i wont bore you with those details, suffice to say that Andrea was pretty cheesed off that "Devil Wears Prada" was one of the movies on the plane. She's lost all motivation now to read the book she's been carrying since London.

The flight had one stop over, and that was to the Christmas Island (apparantly there are two sets of islands called this in the world). It's pretty much due south from Hawaii and really is in the middle of nowhere. When we landed the plane had to hang around on the runway by the "terminal" in order for supplies and fuel. Whilst there we were allowed to step out onto the steps and get some fresh air. Kids were waving to us through the chain link fence on the other side of the airport terminal (about 50 feet away). The terminal itself consisted of a shabby hut. I suspect that Pasport control/customs/cleaning was carried out by the same person. Baggage claim was the best though as it consisted of a bloke taking the suitcases off the plane, going over to a hatch in the hut and just handing the travellers their bags through it. Another world entirely compared to what we've been used to in the US and UK.

Going over the date line had more of an impact than we thought. Although our body clocks were fine, figuring out what day it was was more of an issue, to the point that when it came to transfering to the other resort after the first 5 days in Fiji, we had to rely on the hotel to tell us when we were leaving. From my point of view, i had real problems with figuring out what time/day it was back home. Andrea was fine with this matter, i think it was because of my man-brain not coping at all well with it.

Simon's views on Fiji

to be continued... :)

Andreas views on Fiji

Next stop Fiji for 10 glorious sunny days. 5 days in Bekana Island Resort, 5 days in Niviti Resort.

Okay the first thing to say about Fiji is that its hot hot hot. 2nd thing to say its got a lot of mosquitos.

To be continued....

Ok going to try and write this, its going to be a long diary entry as its got 10 days worth of memories. Simon is gonna write his view on the same 10 days as well.

Bekana Island
This was to be my dream accomodation in that it was the beachfront Bure with a hammock in front of it. Since meeting Simon one of the things i have always wanted to do was sit in a hammock with him and watch the sunset, well we nearly did that. We sat in the hammock and got bitten on the arse by the mosquitos and watched the big boats in the marine. Im happy to tick it off my list of 'to do's'.
On arriving at Fji airport it was very weird in that loads of people come up and try to help you, our guards were up as we felt like we were gonna get fiddled and was gonna get thrown into a taxi even though we had already arranged transport, but really it was because they genuinally wanted to help. We discovered this as the 10 days progressed.

To get to the island we had to go on a little boat and when we arrived the hotel manager who was very very gay welcomed us to 'our new home'.

In regard to Bekana, we went off exploring and did discover that their really is nothing to the island. its just the holiday resort and thats about it.

Ive got to be realistic and accept that im probably never gonna finish this blog so im going to list all the things abut the place so i dont forget them.

• Airplane/Christmas Island
• The trip to bekana on the boat
• Snorkling at Sekana Island (desert island)
• Learning to Kayak
• Skirt and Shoes going missing then reappearing the day after
• Food included in price/Food really really nice. Steak and pepper sauce mmmmm
• Simon getting his lamb chop pinched my cat of his plate
• Steven Siegal (the entertainment guy)
• Trying to phone home. They have to ring the operator who was busy to ring home
• tipping not compulary they recommend that you put a big tip at the end of the holiday into the staffs christmas fund. We instead tip like the americans
• When sat eating a meal (there is only about 4 tables of people) they sing songs (steven and his band)
• When you arrive the gay manager declared how we have to act like this is our home now.
• hammock
• mosquito bites
• Kava Ceremony (instead of drink the locals get high of this stuff)
• My beautiful beachfront bure.
• THe melbourne family (Grant & Louise, Rebecca 18, Ryan 12, James 16)
• The owners being there at the same tiem (perhaps thats why the food was so so good). Geofrey was the son in law of the owners that owned bekana island and sekand island (Note they own the islands) and he was the CEO of the bank UBF in Hong Kong. He had lived with his wife in London and New York and was now in Hong Kong, but he was about 35 and a really really nice bloke. Really down to earth.
• Drunk and being sat arund the band with people singing and playing the bongos. Well Simon was playing them.
• Going to Church in Lautoka and sitting through a Fijian ceremony. watching the little kids at the front being bored and fidgetting and getting slapped with a ruler.
• Taxi to the Church had 7 of us in it.
• The drapers (the melbourne family) was the only people with us on the island on the last couple of days so we spent a lot of time with them drinking gin and tonics and vodka. They are a really really nice family.
• Buying room spray instead of mosquito spray. didnt read the labels properly and it was the cheapest thing in the shop.

Niviti Resort

• Different atmosphere - Like Egypt. All inclusive
• Chatted with English couple Kelly and Mark. She was very similar to me. Tey going round the world the other way so going to las vegas. Gave them our travel book.
• Fishin - I caught my first fish.only 2 of us caught fishes and mine was the biggest
• Learnt how to do Archery (badly)
• Did a lot of people watching. - Women Spewing, russion man and woman, 2 people on a dating holiday, and the ugly bunch of girls.
• Taxi journey there and back was just us, resort really really quite because of the coup
• Fire walking
• Simon liked the burgers i liked the chinese
• Swim up bar. Lots of vodkas and oranges.

27/11/2006 Arbiiiieeeeesssssss on our last day

We found Arbies today (at last) and Hard Rock Cafe. Some of you may know about my obsession with Arbies so it was a good feelin that finally we found an Arbies and i could sit and enjoy my roast beef sandwich. I made Simon have somethin completely different as i didnt want him to not enjoy the roast sandwich and therefore be disappointed in the meal i enjoy so much. :-)

I saw Santa today as well in the shoppin centre admittedly for us we are still trying to get our head round the idea of weather being hot but Santa will still be wearin his big red coat and will still be delivering Simon his Nintendo Wii for Christmas if he is a good boy. :-)

The barman in Hard Rock told us off for not going up to North Shore as there had been a lot of Surfin comps been going on this week and we had missed them. All the champions had been there apparently. We said next time we come to Hawaii this is what we would make an effort to see.

We never made it to Pearl Harbour in the end. As we werent in the mood for sittin on a bus for a couple of hours on our last day in America after doin so much travellin the day before. Shopping seemed so much more appertising and since when am i gonna say no to that.

Its been a nice day today just taking in Hawaii we both agree that its a great place to be and would like to come back here as there is things that we havent had time to do.

One of things we did buy was an extra piece of luggage. We decided that it was worth having an extra bag to take some of the pressure off Simons case as his wheel would work some days and not others and if it helped to make my suitcase any lighter then that can only be a good thing. Now the bag we bought is TACKY but in Hawaii looks normal. Ive started to realise that as we have travelled through Fiji to Sydney actually it looks mega tacky and at some point im gonna have to disown it.

For tea we had KFC. Instead of the normal fries i had mashed potato and gravy. Strange menu.

26/11/06 - Volcano

Today was always gonna be a long day. It was a trip to The Big Island and look at one of the most active volcanoes in the world. We set the alarms for 3:50 in the morning in order to amble down to the lobby and hop onto our transfer to the airport. The first thing that hit us was that Waikiki doesn't sleep, it could of easily been nine at night. The Denny's restaurant was full up ! Anyway, after picking up another couple on a different tour of the Big Island we got to the airport and got checked in. Our suntan lotion was duly confiscated (never liked that one anyway) by security. Then we discovered that we had to wait around for ages because that couple that we picked up had a flight that was around an hour and a half earlier than ours! It's instances like this that really wind Andrea up...being required to get up early and then just hang around for an hour and a half when she could of been asleep in bed. I just took the opportunity to grab a Starbucks wakeup call. :)

Getting to the Big Island we were greeted by our tour guide called Hank. Hank was a native Hawaiian/Elvis look alike. He also grew up on The Big Island too, so had a lot of historical and childhood stories about it. The first part of the trip was to a little store to stock up on water and sun tan lotion. Outside this little unassuming hut, is a massive tree that was planted by a chap called Babe Ruth :) That was quite cool seeing that. Then a load of Japanese turned up on two coaches and swamped the tree with camera flashes. Then it was to a famous waterfall there that I'd never heard of. That was quite impressive. Again, those crazy Japanese turned up with their cameras and swamped the place. On both occasions though we'd managed to see and do everything that we needed. Andrea already noted this and congratulated Hank on the matter.

After that it was a wander through a lava tube which was a bit like a cavey kinda tunnel. Then it was off on a long drive over the volcano and down the other side to the coast to watch where the lava meets the sea. The drive there was very impressive, you would see jungle like vegetation and then all of a sudden it was disappear into a bald Mars like landscape with steam coming up from the ground. We reached the end of the road, literally as three years previous LOTS of lava poured over the side volcano and straight over the road. This lava is still coming out of the volcano and is hitting the sea 'causing massive plumes of steam. Unfortunately, we never had time to hike right up to this point and we could only see it from a far ;( Anyway, the place was amazing and pretty surreal too.

Next was a drive back up to the volcano museum to learn about, err, volcanoes. The drive there was really cool as there was loads of steam vents and fissures to see. Our only gripe was that we never got to stop off and see these vents.

Then it was a very late lunch at a restaurant on top of the volcano. It was another all you can eat buffet but the best thing about it was that the Japanese turned up at the buffet too, creating great mountains of food on their plates. It really wasn't uncommon to see some of the people coming out with a plate containing: lettuce, potatoes, rice, other veg, pineapple, other fruit, cake, and one bit of steak on top.

The last few stops of the day was basically to kill a bit time. One an Orchid nursery/garden centre, and the other a Macadamia nut factory! *sigh* Anyone that knows the two of us knows that Andrea can't stand nuts and i'm allergic to them. Luckily the factory itself was closed so it was off to the store to find out what was there...errmm...nuts, lots of them. However, there was one of these pearl shops like the one where Andrea got her earrings from earlier in the week. This time we watched as an American lady paid to open two oysters and each oyster contained two black pearls. Very impressive, but not for the husband as the wife's expectation went from a pair of $60 earrings to an entire $600 necklace! The husband just told her to not get carried away, that they needed to go soon, and then walked off rather briskly.

Hilo airport has the best departure lounge i've ever been too. It consists of a speaker system that constantly plays hula music and has that kind of outdoor wooden furniture (with cushions) that you might see for sale at garden centres. It all creates a rather relaxed atmosphere, which was lucky for us as we were about to have quite a wait (again). Another two hour wait at the airport and then it was delayed by 30 mins too. We got back to the hotel at around ten(ish). Exhausted, we just crashed out for the night.

Note to our loyal readers :-)

Howdy - We are off to Fiji tomorrow (Tuesday) which we also seem to lose a day as well (not got my head round that yet. ) We will be in front of you all now not behind.

anyway what im writing to say is that as we are going to a Beachfront Bure (ie a shed on the beach which had better have a hammock) its really unlikely that we will have internet access. Keep looking in the meantime as we will update when we can (im addicted to this now) but we should be in Australia in 10 days and then we will definatly be on the internet then and we will update it.

Andrea and Simon

25/11/2006 Hanauma Bay

I got up at 8 oclock this morning, to train myself for the 4 oclock start the next morning. I left Simon snoring in bed and went and got breakfast at the Big Kahuma downstairs. We then got ready to go to Pearl Harbour, we packed up ready to go and then decided at the last minute that as it was saturday it may be to busy and therefore perhaps it was a bad idea so decided to get changed and pack up again and head for Hanauma Bay. Apparently everyone raves about this place for the snorkling. We eventually set of for the bay and waited at the bus stop for nearly an hour, the time passes quickly cos its interesting to people watch. Hawaii is a lot like California in that they have a lot of tramps hanging around not asking for money but just wanting to sleep. So we had a tramp that was asleep wrapped around the rose bushes behind us. He eventually stirred and got up and went straight to nosy in the bin. I think they get money for recyling stuff out of the bins.
Hanauma Bay - This was a beautiful place it was a beach in a bay. To get in you had to pay $5 each and had to watch a video telling us that it was bad to touch the coral. The place was really really pretty and without the people there i would have felt like i was in 'lost' . The thing thats nice about hawaii is that its so green and hot at the same time.
Simon is gonna continue this day...

I'm continuing now :)

Anyway...we then came out of the feature presentation and went down the hill. There's a tram you can take up and down the hill. It's free to go down but a dollar to come back up, clever lot. Anyway we managed to set up and get some snorkeling gear hired. The place is gorgeous, the abundance and variety of fish that are in the sea there is staggering. Both Andrea and I saw turtles swimming in the sea and munching stuff off the reef...which is where my only gripe about the place is...

There's far too many people here. For every interesting fish/turtle there will be about 10 people crowding round underwater to look at it. Invariably there was always some idiot who wants to get so close with the camera that it scares the creature off and blocks every ones view.

The evening was pretty boring as we'd booked for an excursion to the Big Island the next day, very early the next day.

24/11/06 DIAMOND HEAD and Pearls

Today we went into a dormant volcano, called Diamond Head. We got the bus there and walked up this hill and then through a tunnel and Simon commented to me that i needed to look around me and actually appreciate that i was standing in the volcano there and then. It was a park in a big area that if you looked around you, you could see that yes we seem to be in some sort of crater. It made us laugh that in the middle of a volcano there was telephones and toilets. The next part of this journey was to climb up one of the sides of the volcano to the highest point so you can have a panaramic view of o'ahu (this is the hawaii island we are on). This involved steep rocky paths and lots of stairs. We seemed to be in sync with a family climbing up whereby the women was as knackered as me, which made me feel better until i found out she was pregnant so no wonder she was tired. Shows how unfit i am. The view at the top was (using one of simons words) - breathtaking, but to be honest not really worth the climb up for me anyway i think Simon was woooed by it though.

The wooo factor for both of us though today was when we walked down to the harbour. It wasnt the boats either it was the water around the boats. Now it looked pretty manky and really uninviting, but when we started to look closer we could see beautiful fishes in it and then we started to walk futher into the harbour we realised that there was tons of jelly fish in the water each about the size of my head. i was amazed by this until we say the best bit. It was 2 stingrays white and black dotted they were. Ive seen stingrays lots of times and even touched them but they have always been in captivity so to see them in the sea was fantastic.
After leaving the harbour we walked along the beach (walking like an african - mum will understand) and watched the sunset from some rocks that Simon said were big chunks of volcanic rock. The sunset was beautiful we sat there with our DietCoke with Lime and Diet Dr Pepper bikkering about what the rocks were made of. Ah heaven :-)
and then the cherry on the cake was going to CHILIS. I had my buffalo wings that i have wanted for the past 3 weeks and to be honest i was defeated. I left 1 and Simon just laughed at me cause they were so hot, but thats another thing i can tick of my list of things ive done. Got to find an arbys next though.
We booked the Big Island trip today as well, which makes me happy as i really wanted to go over on to another island and see a different park of hawaii. Wakkiki is nice but its very high rise hotels and very populated and we want to see somewher that looks a little like 'LOST'

23/11/06 Thanksgiving Day

Today was a relaxing day, well an attempt by me to relax so as not to peck simons head all the time at the beach. I did it though, i got into my book and managed to relax. To be honest i dont think we did much this day as im struggling to remember. So i may just leave it as this and we will add on to this day when we remember. Im sure the memorable thing though will be to do with food, it always is when im involved. Which yes i now remember what we did for breakfast we went to IHOP Internal House of Pancakes. Simon had an illuminous eggs benedict, he still reckons that the eggs benedict at the greasy cafe in california was the nicest one. I had crepes :-). Then we went to the beach.
In the evening we stayed in, and i got a microwave meal that had a hair in it. Nice. I was enjoying it as well it was prawns in a chilli sauce with rice. Damn Simon enjoyed his though.

22/11/06 Diamond Head and PEARLS

Well, waking up in our air conditioned hotel was great. For me personally, it was great getting up and knowing that we didn't have to pack all our stuff up again for another drive/hotel. California and Vegas was fantastic don't get me wrong, but it was exhausting sometimes. Anyway, needless to say we had a lie in. I think we had a lie in 'cause even at the date of this post i can't remember actually getting up before 10. ;)

We pretty much headed straight for Waikiki beach for a sit down, read, relax, and a bit of a sun bathe. Well, that's pretty what should of happened. Instead, i was trying to relax, get into my book and Andrea was pecking my head. The most common "pecks" were...

• Have you seen the state of her?
• Look at the size of that...
• What has she got on...
• What are we doing now?
• Simon...?

As you can see Andrea's brain was still in California. :) We weren't on the beach long and decided to do a bit of shopping. They have these cool chain of shops around here and on the west coast called The Pearl Factory. The difference is, you get the pearl out of the oyster and then they set it for you in what ever you want. We decided on a set of earrings for her so went to open two oysters. Andrea first, and she pulls out the most massive pearl out of this little oyster. I felt that she threw down the gauntlet so picked my oyster and got it opened and there was a pearl inside that was just as big but metallic in colour. The chap behind the desk gave me a hi 5 and said that that was a pretty rare one and was worth around $300 :) Andrea loves her new earrings. I'm hoping that she doesn't get too attached though as eBay beckons ;)

Whilst shopping, one thing we notice was just how hot the sun is here. Due to the humidity, standing still will cause you to burst into a sweat pretty quickly. Stranger still was the fact that the temperature in the shade was really cool. Quite a difference really between the two.

For our evening dinner we went down a back street to this dingy Korean restaurant that served the most amazing food. We weren't quite sure what we were eating but it was pretty tasty. After that we went to the big Kahuna bar for a drink and there was a live band that was alright, but it was all in preparation for the Thanksgiving countdown :)

21/11/06 Oloha hawaii and adios vegas

I hate getting up early, i hate getting up early when i have a hangover, and i especially hate getting up early when i have a hangover and a dicky stomach.

We were both very rough today, and today entailed walking in the hotel with 2 suitcases, and 4 rucksacks and 2 small bags. Gettig a taxi to the airport, checking in and not getting charged extra for luggage( we had 4 bags but all were below the required stupid weight - my case was only just though), getting on a plane (it was all 1 step at a time in my head). getting of a plane in los angeles, reminding myself that i dont like los angeles. Getting through passport control 3 hours too early for plane. Deciding we needed some food so bought some soup (ive got a dicky stomach remember) except i bought it from 'chillis' and it was a spicy chicken nacho soup. hahaha wrong thing. get on plane and watch the same film we watched coming to america, and the devil wears prada (which is the book im currently reading) . Waited for the 4 bags to come up, 1 bag which is full of dirty washing took a very long time we both started to worry about this one. (we were prepared to walk away if the bag had ripped). Got the shuttle bus, got of the shuttle bus and it started to rain, and then we checked in to a great hotel. Really pleased with the hotel it has a contempory feel about it. Not sure if it has a swimming pool but dont think it matters.

We are relieved that we now have a week to relax and not pack up.

20/11/06 The big (well for us anyway ) blow out

I promise never to drink and eat chicken tenders with chilli sauce the day before we are spending the whole day flying, gees i felt rough but more about that tomorrow.

As this is our last day, we said that we would blow the money that we had budgeted for betting. We started out with $100 and on the last day we had $100 left to spend. Therefore we had done really well because we had not managed to win what we had spent and had had plenty of drinks in between. I think i have mastered the drink that i have now finally. its vodka, sprite and lime JUICE (or rose juice), if i dont say lime JUICE then i get a slice of lime. I had been trying desperately to get rid of the money by putting the money in wrong machines but nothing happened :-)

The day was spent wondering around the hotels that we hadnt yet been in such as Luxor and excalibur and mandalay bay as really today was all about the evening.

Before going out we packed up and im so glad we did this. We even had weighin scales in the room so i could get my suitcase down to the correct weight.

We spent the evening wandering about with our $100 burning a hole in our pockets. We decided that we were gonna waste it on roulette but we needed to find a table that had a minimum bet of $2 dollars not $10 as we would have finished fairly shortly. We walked through most of the hotels and ended up in hooters cos it seemed to be a bit cheaper then everywhere else and its not nearly as big as the other ones, we were right, and because of this the waitress came round all the time for drinks and all simon had to do was nod and a drink was placed in front of him. Unfortunatly she didnt get that the nod was surpose to mean a drink for me as well.

Before we got to Hooters we walked through the Belagio and thats where we saw the ultimate showman. He looked like (simons words) a Columbian Drug Baron. He was on a $1 chip roulette table and he would put about 4 columns stack of chips on 1 number that must have been about 25 chips high each and then there was 1 stack on top of them that was about 50 $1chips and then some highchips on top of that.. It was unbelievable. . It was a balancing act to see how high they could go, it certainly got the crowds in, to the point where his women walked away in i think embarrasment and sat on another table playing with about 10 chips looking miserable. Anyway as well as this number he would also cover the other numbers with plenty of $100 chips. So inevitably he was winning which when he did he would tip the croupier $50 each throw. The Croupier must have been buzzing.

Anyway the long and short of the day is that we lost our money, but we had a damn great time. Simon reckons when one of his mates gets married that they go their on a stag do for the weekend but they each need about £1000 to lose.

I think out of all the casinos the one we liked the most was New York New York because they really did get the novalty factor right to a 'T' but the room we stayed in was for me out of this world. I loved it. :-)

19/Nov/2006: An MGM Grand Day out

This morning, the weekend would be over as far as the hotels were concerned, which meant price crashes on the strip ! After checking out of the hotel and then hunting about on an Internet terminal. We managed to get a west wing room at the MGM Grand Hotel at a bargain price of $100 :) We then collared a taxi to take us there who remembered half way that we were going to the hotel and not the airport! We never realised that this hotel was quite so big until we got here. Even from the strip it doesn't look that big compared to some of the ones that are around. The drop off point for the hotel had 6 lanes for cars, 20 checkin receptionists, oh and we got given a map of the hotel so we didn't get lost!

It was at this point that i discovered that the wheel had broke on the suitcase due to the sheer weight in it (Later i fixed the wheel). We could of got a bell hop, but thought that the experience in actually finding the room would be more fun. After dragging the suitcase through one part of the casino, leaving a trail on the carpet as i went 'cause of the wheel, we managed to find our west wing area where our room was at. It's also demoralising when the put giant mirrors at the end of the corridor stretching it, when you have a stuck wheel. Anyway, we got to the room and WOW. Very nice and contemporary. All the bits you would expect from a hotel of this level and then we discovered a TV built into the mirror in the bathroom ! That completely did it for Andrea.

Food came to the fore again, so we thought we pop down and go to the Grand Buffet ! $20's each for all you can eat food, then for an extra $2.50 we could have all you can drink champagne ! At that price and with it being past 11:00 in the morning...how could we refused? ;) I meant to start off well and not overdo it. 1 hour and breakfast, brunch, roast dinner later, not to mention a few glasses of champagne, i was starting to feel the effects. Andrea actually managed to control herself this time and was fine. We went back to the room for a bit and managed to inadvertently zonk out for 3 or so hours *sigh*. Once my belly had recovered, it was finally time to explore The Strip !

We head out into the main area of the MGM Grand, the bit with the indoor Lion enclosure and the most massive sport betting viewing area I've ever seen. We head upstairs and onto the walkway to the New York New York hotel. That hotel makes me laugh and fills me with wonder at the same time. Moving up we then went to the Bellagio hotel, mainly to watch the famous fountains. Over the course of two days we watched it to Crooners, Classical, Opera, Pop, and even some Kenny G rubbish! The first three are by far the most powerful. Every performance is matched to the music and there's a different one every 15 mins. Fabulous. Moving up it was Ceasers Palace, then down the other side, taking in the Paris, Venetian, Bally's, then Stephen Speilberg's GameWorks arcade (very overrated as an arcade), M&M World, then back to MGM Grand :) After all that walking around and laughing at just how skimpy the waitresses uniforms can be at the casinos, it was time for food again!

By the way, if you want a drink in Vegas go onto the 1 cent slot machines, pop in a dollar and sooner or later a waitress will pop up offering you a free drink of what ever you like :) You can have a very cheap night that way. Besides, even if you don't gamble just sit at a machine, get a drink, and people watch. You can imagine that a place as crass and wonderful as Vegas attracts those sort of people too :) To generalise, the people fall into these categories...

• Couples with not much money
  
• Drunks
• Down and outs
• Tramps
• Rich blokes with trophy wives
• Utter show offs
  
• Families
• Families that go on the slots and leave there kids sat down out of the casino area completely unsupervised. Truly shocking.
• Enormous people
• Man eaters
  

I hoping that Andrea and I fell into the 1st category.

Back to the food. We then went to the small, by Vegas standards, casino called "Hooters" :) Believe it or not, the waitresses were the tamest dressed of all of the casinos despite the reputation of the chain of restaurants. Our waitress today was small buxom girl that decided to take a shine to me despite the presence of Andrea. I would like to say it was my rugged good looks, but alas it was my accent. She told me it's fantastic, and then preceded to stay within earshot of Andrea and I throughout the course of the evening, coming up every five minutes to ask if the meal was OK or if we needed anything.

After the meal, we then retired back to our grand hotel.

18/11/06 Stratosphere

2nd day in las vegas we wanted to go further down the strip so we headed for the stratosphere. Before we came to Las Vegas one of the things that i said to Simon was that i would pay for him to go on the 3 rides on the stratosphere so i could understand what his limit was as im such a wimp when it comes to going on rollercoasters.
Anyway the walk down was interesting. I asked Simon a number of times to marry me but he said no ;-). We walked past the wedding chapels. The best one though was the drive thru one which had elvis singing to you. We actually saw a couple getting married in their car.
Once at the Stratosphere we discovered that if we went for lunch at the top then you dont have to pay the entry fee. So we did lunch hhaaa any excuse. It was a revolving restaurant so we got to sit and admire the view of New York, Paris, Las Vegas all in one sitting and we got to drink Champagne at the same time. It was free Stratosphere Champagne. Im loving this city.
We had a women take our pictures at the restaurant and i learnt that so i dont have the half asleep look that i always seem to have on my face im to close my eyes and count to three and then open my eyes and try not to look startled. It worked cos now i ended up with 2 pics of me and Simon that against all my funny habits is now in my purse. So really today i broke all my rules. 1. I asked him to marry me. 2. im now carryin a picture of simon in my purse and at the moment im spending every day with the guy geeessss :-)
After lunch we went up to top of the tower. Simon then looked at all 3 rides. One was like a seesaw over the top - he wimped out. One was like a octopus hanging over the side, he wimped out and the other one was like the playstation ride at blackpool where it shoots up. He decided to go for this one. I said i would record him flying up but i didnt, i managed to record somebody else instead :-). Now to be fair to Simon, he said that was his limit, and we did hear from someone else that said that was the scariest of the 3 because itts so unbelievable high and its fastier then the others. Aparently its the 3rd scariest ride in the world and Simon did it.
The rest of the day was spent walking around the casinos, including the Hilton where elvis spent most of his last years before he died and trying to find the circus acts in the circus circus casino, which we eventually found by looking up at the ceiling and seeing the acrobats.

17/11/06 - Diva Las Vegas

I think .... i dont like Los Angeles.
1. The traffic is sooooooo sooooo bad, its scary and there is far to many lanes. People dont like to let you in when you are trying to move lanes either.
2. The parking wardens are to active (we had been gone 10mins)
3. The airport women are just money grabbers. Got charged $100 extra for extra weight in 2 suitcases but it was okay for us to have 4 suitcases with double the weight - warped common sense there.
4. The hotel receptionists are rude. (we had a problem with our room ie. it wasnt ours and we had to change rooms and we felt like it was our fault.)
5. The tramps here are mean. We were nice and gave the tramp pecking our head in the carpark a doller and he didnt say thanks and came back cos it wasnt enough. cheeky.
6. The hollywood sign is to far away i never got to see if properly
7. and i stilllllll cant find an Arbys

Today is the day we leave Los Angeles at 5.30 in the morning to go to Las Vegas. My day didnt start of well, having to get up far to early and then being stung for excess lugage put me in a bad mood and Simon got the brunt of it. whoops. I soon came out of this when we got to Las Vegas. The first thing we had to do when we got there was to find a hotel. We are staying here for 4 days and really i wanted to stay in one of the nice hotels but we discovered that the prices at the weekend was way to expensive (for our budget anyway) so we decided to stay downtown for 2 days and this would then allow us to see the Fremont Street Experience and then move up the strip to the posher end at the end of the week.

We ended up at the 'Las Vegas Club' hotel for $80 a night.

We had a great day we spent the most of the day having a bet and getting drunk. If you sit in a casino at a slot machine then you get free alcholic drinks so thats what we did. I had a $20 dollar bet on the wheel and won $70 dollars (the same amount as the parking ticket) and then simon won $55 dollars from a $3 bet on a slot machine (choclate factory) wwwoooooo loving las vegas.
One of the casinos we wanted into was Binions. We discoverd later that this is the casino where you can place the biggest bets in Las Vegas. I.e. 25000 dollars. The casino we both seemed to like was the Golden Nugget Casino. This had the biggest piece of gold nugget in the world. it was massive and worth a million dollars. It also had at the swimming pool a tube slide. Ok so not so unusual but it is when it went through a tank of sharks. hahahah

The highlight for us though was the main reason for staying downtown and that was to see the Fremont Street Experience - Geek moment for a min - its the the world’s largest LED display
system. http://www.vegasexperience.com/viva3.cfm . 12.5 million lights on the roof. It was amazing to see this and is something i can now strike of my list as having seen.



Highlights
Leaving Los Angeles
Freemont Street Experience
Winning on the wheel

16/11/06 The mummy 3 times

Well today was a big driving day. Not by distance, but by the fact that we had to get across Los Angeles in rush hour. Andrea drove and i navigated as i would of got far too stressed with Andrea's navigating skills ;) Anyway, Andrea did marvelously and happily navigated some of the 6 lane freeways and 5 lane roads!

Right, a bit of background to me here. I've never been to America before and the biggest theme park i've been too has been Alton Towers (the shame) so going to somewhere like universal was new to me. Which is pretty much why i'm writing this and not Andrea. You can get my "innocent" take on it :)

First of all, I did love Universal Studios at Hollywood even if it didn't have enough roller coasters. It only had one, albeit very good, called The Mummy. We started at the top of the park and the first thing that hit me was just how good Americans are at putting "polish" on things. Like the enthusiasm of the attendants, no litter, lots of neon, etc...

The first thing that happened was that i got collared by Marilyn Monroe, via Andrea, for a photo opportunity. Then we shot off to watch Shrek 4d, which was pretty amazing (Just loved the bits with Donkey sneezing and the spiders). Then Terminator 2 3d and that back to the future ride. Incidentally, I struggled to get Andrea on to the front of the back to the future ride, but managed to. That pretty much set a precedent throughout the day of getting Andrea on rides that she wouldn't normally go on...ie: the fast ones, more about that in a mo. The next thing we did was go on the Studio tour, which i must admit did it for me. Really good to see the outdoor sets of all the past films. The tv's on the bus would always tell you what films were filmed at that location (past and present). Then we went past stuff regarding special effects, the odd thrill ride on the tour (like the flood, king kong, jaws) They even had the entire set from Psycho ! very cool. Andrea was more wooed by the cars from "The Fast and the Furious"...but then again she does own a burberry baseball cap and is a secret chav (She would say Posh Chav).

Then we moved to the fast rides. I managed to get Andrea onto the Mummy (a pretty darn fast roller coaster) three times by the end of the day! This was mainly because she wanted a good photo of herself to come out that made her look like she was actually enjoying herself ! It never happened. I was even more impressed by the Jurassic Park ride. The shear drop at the end was breathtaking. Andrea was more scared of the plastic dinosaurs that popped up periodically. *sigh*

After that was two shows. I must admit that normally this sort of thing just would not interest me but i was completely wowed by these two shows. The first one was animal actors. Just a load of animals that acted. These little fellas were all the "star" animals from tvshows/adverts/films and must admit, acted a lot better that some of the cast of Eastenders. The next one was Waterworld. All of the people that were in this one were in shows like CSI and a load of other American dramas. Although we sat two rows behind the "soak zone" we still got wet. Andrea got absolutely soaked through because she only had a child in front of her to hide behind. If any of you go to this show, go to the earlier viewing and not the later one as at least the sun can dry you off during the day and not the moon freezing you. This show was much better than the flop of a film it was based on.

So the day came to the end and the park booted us out. We went back a simpler route than when we came here as there was less chance of us ending up in the "wrong" side of town. Still Los Angeles in the evening rush hour was ten times worse than during the day. It took us three of hours to get across the city. Even at around 9:00 at night Los Angeles is like Manchester in rush hour. Admittedly, we needed to find a printer and some internet access do do some bits for our next leg and Fiji. We just used one in some random hotel by the airport which was manned by a big black American lady who was lovely. She kept calling Andrea "Sugar" and "Girl", it was straight out of Jerry Springer!

PS. Simon wrote this

15/11/06 Skates, muscles and parking tickets

Due to no internet access and casinos and free booze we have managed to lag behind a couple of days so i will try to catch up a little. Im writing this whilst in Las Vegas after having an all you can eat buffett plus drink as much as you like champagne which means Simon has conked out for 10mins as his belly is full.

Anyway back to San Barbara
The Cabrillo Inn is my favourite place so far. If Simon had been willing to let me have the duvet i would have slept the whole night outside on the balcony. Simon did manage to wake me up at abuot 5.30 for the sunset (as i insisted on sleeping with the curtains and the patio windows open.) i managed to gaze at it for about 30 secs and then fell asleep.

Next the drive continues through malibu beach. We wer on the look out for Sharon Osborne and Arnie but no such look. To be honest i was a little disappointed in Malibu beach it didnt have that wow factor that i was expecting. We did however see a camera crew that was about to shut of the road we were driving on as the view was so cool. im sure we will see it in some film at some point.

Now one of the main things on my to do list was to roller skate along a beach in America and thats exactly what this day was about for me. I didnt really care where it was, it just about doing it. So i did it on Santa monica beach/Venice Beach. If i must say i think i was really good :-) and Simon had to follow me carrying my handbag feeling very gay :-D.

We passed the old muscle beach which seems to have turned more into a circus/yoga beach where there was some impressive hula hooping and a really muscly women climbing up a big rope. This is when i insisted that we actually must go to the real muscle beach. So we did, and then parked on a perfectly normal road and then saw the real muscle beach and then got a parking ticket for $70. Damn. Apparently you cant park on a red kerb. Nobody told us that.

After that we decided to get to a hotel and this was our first real tastier of traffic. having driven down route 1 whereby you can be on a stretch of road with no traffic at all, this was our first real tastier of routes 4 lanes wide (ie 8 lanes) . Scary.

Had the best meal for me anyway of some mexican shrimp in sauce. It was like prawn curry, mmmm just my thing, just regreted the day after though. :-)

14/11/2006 Posh is as posh does

It was a long drive again today, but we took in some sights and went through some of the typical American towns that you would expect...well from TV anyway. or maybe the movies...*cough* Deliverance ;) We've kinda gotten into a routine with stopping in a different hotel every night and it generally consists of...

• wake up a 6 and muck about with the laptop and rubbish TV til 10:30
• panic to get dressed, packed and out for 11:00. Mainly to beat the checkout time, but also to just stop wasting the day away
• grab a coffee/tea from the hotel as we check out (to go)
• hit the road and start driving
• 11:30 realise we're starving and breakfast/lunch becomes #1 priority
• pull into some random town and have breakfast
• 12:30 start the day :)

...that's generally how it goes. However, today was slightly different as Andrea spotted, like a hawk i might add, an outlet shopping mall! All of a sudden breakfast was pushed to #2 and shopping for bargains #1. She managed to pick up a Tommy Hilfiger t-shirt, and jumper (don't ask) for £13 ! I got a pair of nice Adidas trainers for £10 because my existing ones are knackered. A difference between the sexes there and reminds me of the saying...

Men will spend £20 on an item worth £10 that he needs, women will spend £10 on an item worth £20 that she doesn't ;)

Flame me down if you want ladies, i know the guys are in agreement here.

We had McDonalds for breakfast.

From here on in it was a straight drive to Santa Barbara going past Vandenburg Air Force Base and a detour to 14 mile Jalama Beach. Jalama Beach had yet more fantastic views of the Californian coast, we stopped for about 10 mins and then got back on our way.
Santa Barbara was a very nice beach side resort. We treated ourselves here to a "posh" hotel costing $99 that was right on the ocean front and called Cabrillo Inn. You can see our hotel room just above the sign on the picture. They were having some sort of "Farmers market" here but it was more like hippies selling veg. Very nice and street performers were out too.

As we spent soooo much on a hotel we thought we'd go whole hog and have a posh meal too. The meal i must say was fantastic and one of the best i've had here. You would class the resturant as a classy one and call the food al-a-carte. ; Americans just don't quite get it tho and it made us chuckle. Upon serving the meal the waitress scurried off, and came back and put some ketchup on our table.

It was Heinz tho...is that posh?

13/11/2006 Seals and Tack all in one day

Woke up in San Simeon Lodge budget hotel of 42 dollars. My favourite hotel so far. As to the actual town of San Simeon - nothing there. After packing up we retraced back about 8 miles and went to the Elephant Seals beach. This was amazing. I had chipmunks trying to attack me but Simon saved me. The chipmunks and the little birdies trying to get some food running from the water was the icin on the cake for what we saw with the Elephant Seals. There was absolutely loads of seals asleep on the beach, and there was ones swimming in the sea but the best bit was watching a bull seal sat on the beach, and then seeing another seal trying to get out of the water. They squared up and then slowly moved towards each other, it was like watching a western, and then bam they started bashing chests against each other trying to stamp their authority it was amazing to watch.
We drove further down into Cambria and had brekkie there, if was another american diner, not as good though as the one we went to yesterday. We did our first petrol stop here as we only had about a quarter of the tank left(i would have let it to the fumes but simon said no :-) ) and filled up, it cost us 20 dollars and we had nearly a tank full.
We then went down on to moonstone beach. The guide says that it was named for the shoreline shimmering. It was a beach and it was cold. We moved on. :-)
We carried on driving down the coast and planed to stay at San Luis Obispo (SLO), once we got there we decided to carry on driving it was a nice place but it didnt wooo us. I think to be honest we had got used to driving into small villages and being on roads with nobody about that the invasion of people was unwanted and we werent ready for it. Before we left though we did go to the madonna inn. www.madonnainn.com. Pink and gerish explained this place to a tee, apparently and i saw pictures to confirm this, you can rent a room for the night and you can request the room decoration you want. for examle you could spend the night in a cave, or an english room. or a pink room. Nice... We setttled for a drink and a giant black forest gateau, this gave Slatteries a run for its money to be honest.
We stayed in a town called Pizmo beach. This was in a bargain motel for $38 dollers, called Beachwalker Inn and Suites. It was a massive room with a kitchen/diner. Sounds nice, it wasnt, haha but it did the job, it had a comfy bed. We had tea out and had a couple of drinks. We went to an american bar that had a band (well 2 men that played music like my dads band) . Me and Simon had a coupe of games of pool. Simon won just..

The Big Sur with Madam Pop

Today was a day of big things. A big drive, a big breakfast(and best so far), and of course the big sur. First of all it was waking up in Santa Cruz and grabbing some breakfast at a local diner a few miles down the road. Very local as it was more like a greasy spoon that you would find in the UK. I had eggs benidict which was the best thing i've eaten here so far :) After that it was popping to Safeway next door to grab some supplies for the journey...water, friut, doughnuts, Jaelapeno Crisps.

Driving down the coast, we stopped off at Monterey and went to the aquarium. Pretty impressive aquarium and the crowning glory for me was the sea otters that they have there. Very cute. One had a little bit of seaweed that he kept patting. We stopped there for a bit of window shopping and generally enjoying Monterey, then moved on to do the big drive south to San Simeon through the Big Sur. The Big Sur was truely breathtaking, and required pulling over all the time for photo ops. :) We stopped off at the Nepenthe Resturant for a bite to eat. This resturant had amazing views of the coastline here. Moving on we then ended up in San Simeonto hole up for the night. The biggest point of interest here was the receptionist that had so much makup on she actually had 2 sets of false eyelashes attached!

11-Nov-06 Looking for Lost Boys in Santa Cruz

Said good bye to San Francisco after retrieving our really flash car. We have a brand new car that has no central locking, wind up windows and no power when you press the accelerator but I suppose that's what you get after choosing the cheapest thing on the internet. We drove down the crookediest street which was cool and then drove over the golden gate bridge back and forth.
We then started our long drive down highway 1 or rowte 1 if we are American. The views already are magnificent. We stopped a number of times to take pics, and stopped for lunch at moon bay. We had lunch at the pasta moon restaurant very posh but very nice. In the end probably only did about 50 miles and then got to Santa Cruz and decided to stop the night.

Santa Cruz is where Lost Boys is filmed, Simon wanted the tune from the film to be playing in the car to get us into the swing of the place but we forgot. We stayed at a hotel called Paradise Inn for 60 dollars. Mr Patel owned this. We walked into the room and it was like wooowww this is massive the bed was enormous, we were impressed with it until you started to look into it in more detail. Like there was a coffee maker but no cups, the bath really needed a clean, and the toilet was a bit minging. We then discovered that the door lock didn't really work from the outside so Mr Patel had to lock it for us when we needed to go out. We also discovered that night, that California can be cold and when you don't have enough sheets on the bed its not the warmest of places to be. Apart from that though the room was perfectly fine and it was certainly refreshing to be in somewhere where we weren't trippin over each other.

We think we have come to Santa Cruz out of season so the fair was shut which was a shame, but we had a game of crazy golf which Simon won, and then we went and walked up the pier which was massive, and had a couple of drinks there. I for some reason ended up a tad drunk(could have been the doubles i was drinkin) so when we went back to the arcade we spent some money drink driving on the mario kart game (I won twice) and then whilst I was complaining to the man about not getting my tickets out of a machine (I was wrong) Simon was busy in nostalgia mode playing old games. I ended up winning 2 rings, a plastic little plane (pressie for Simon) a beautiful metal smiley face ring for Simon (doesn't seem to want to wear it though :-) ) and a glow in the dark plastic snake that doesn't glow in
the dark. I conked out at about 10:30 but thinking about it may only have been 9:30 (will explain tomorrow)


Highlights
Drivin the crookedist street
Driving the Golden Gate Bridge
Santa Cruz - Lost Boys

10-Nov-06 Last day in San Francisco

Today was spent going to Fishermans Wharf again to cash in on our San Francisco Bay Cruise.
Very interesting. It was good going under the Golden Gate Bridge, gave a true scale as to how big it is. To be fair tho, the Severn Bridge is just as big, just not orangey in colour ;)
Other highlights of the cruise was seeing house boats in Sausalito, one of which is in the shape of the Taj Mahal...Very classy. "Only in America" springs to mind!

Upon docking we caught the tram thingy to the Embarcadero centre which was seemingly mentioned by a lot of people as a good place to shop. It's a 60's/70's looking concrete monster of buildings containing shops of all types. Just no shoppers, perhaps they've been put off by the architecture as well! Further into town we went to the top of Macy's, at the cheesecake factory to have a look over union square which was also where Sachs, Tiffanys. Impressive. Then finding out that it was a 45 minute wait to be seated at the cheesecake factory, we then went to the shopping centre where Bloomingdales is. That was an impressive shopping centre.
Must of been 10 floors of shops with a visually mad escalator system in the middle. In the basement was the food hall with a variety of nice food. We ended up having Korean, very nice and, I think, Andreas flavor of the month. Nb. Comment from Andrea, I was wooed by the fact it was the poshiest fast food hall ive ever been in, the food was on proper plates.

The evening was spent going back to Fishermans wharf to try out the Clam Chowder in a Bread Bowl. As a Brit, this is akin to having your Sunday roast in a giant Yorkshire pudding. Was very nice. Walking over to say goodbye to the seals on Pier 39, we came upon a load of experienced roller bladers/skaters flying past. Andrea was completely wooed by this, and almost started dribbling when a guy flew past roller blading pushing a custom wheelbarrow with a massive sound system inside. I Can't help but think that an iPod would of been a little more portable ;)
Having a drink and a romantic wander marked our last night in lovely San Francisco.

Alcatraz on the Thursday 9th November

Andreas turn to write again.

The highlight of today was definately going to Alcatraz and later finding a bar that sold Champagne that tasted just like Lambrini. :-)

Our visit to Alcatraz.
This was tremendous. We walked round the prison with headphones on with commentary from ex officers and prisoners. It was strange in that everyone was walking around very silently, and you could tell when it was instructing people for example 'turn left and move to cell 115' it was weird seeing a group of people suddenly moving at the same time, i surpose it was inadvertedly creating the ambience of being in a prison and what it would be like.

Lunch at the BubbaGump Shrimp Restaurant. Was lush. Both me and Simon are both wooed by the fact that there is a bubbagump restaurant. We were particularly impressed with the calling of the waiter over. If you didnt need them then you had a number plate on your table say Run Forest Run, and if you wanted the waiter you changed it to 'Stop Forest Stop'

We ended up walking back from Fishermans Wharf as the tram was full. Before we started walking though we ended up in a Pet Shop which was great except we couldnt find the exit. We walked to the window and it just wouldnt open. It was one of them embarrising but funny moments.

The walk back whilst i was unhappy to do was good in that we did a pit stop at the tram factory (which we wouldnt have gone out of our way for) and also ended up walking to the top of one of the big big hills (my legs hurt) and that was Nobhill. It was very posh at the top of the hill, we then realised that our hotel was actually only round the corner from there. From a location point of view our hotel is excellent.

In the evening we went to a bar that reminded me very much of Cocktail with an old guy and a young guy behind the bar and their cocktail skills were really good to watch. We didnt plan on, but we ended up both getting fairly drunk particularly as they were selling a champagne (we think they mean sparklin wine) called wycliff that really does taste like lambrini.

Highlights:
Alcatraz
Drinking Lambrini in a cocktail bar
Seein the seals again on pier 39
Bubbagump shrimp restaurant
finding the abercrombie shop and not buying anything
Simon bought a pair of Rockport - chav
Knowing not to be scared by a tramp dressed as a tree

Golden Gate Bridge From Alcatraz

DSCN0735
Originally uploaded by simbloid.

Couldn't find a horse to make this landscape picture better, so we settled for a yacht. :)

Wed 8th November

Andreas turn to write.

Having managed to have 12 hours sleep, we were raring to go for the day.

We went downstairs to have our free breakfast. It was a very very american surreal moment for me. We were sat there on a table with an american couple and a lady. The conversation consisted of:
Oh are you on your honeymoon
We are just up here with our racehorse and then we drive down to Los Angeles to watch it run next week.
If you get chance go to the Art Gallery and view the Quilt. Its amazing.
Simon got tapped on the shoulder by a guy asking was he a Red or a Blue. The guy was from Stoke :-) and was staying at our hotel.
Go to Herst castle on the way down Route 1 spoken as:- Rowte 1. However as we are english im sure seeing another castle is no big deal.
They love the Belagio Hotel and recommend we went there. I had to butt in and say 'oh yes my mother has been there - yaddy yaddy yah' (not like that but you get the gist)
We also discovered that we went completely the wrong way last night, and if we had turned right instead of left we would have found macys, tiffanys etc and lots of american restaurants but we didnt.

The rest of the day consisted of:

Hooters for lunch
Simon has had a hot dog from a stand on the street just so he could say that he had done it, and then got mustard down his top :-)
We have seen the seals on pier 39
The Bubba Gump Shrimp Restaurant was on pier 39. This amused both of us, i reckon we will prob eat there one night.
We have been on the trams as the hills are massive. We had to hang on the sides the 2nd time we went on.
We found the Crookedist road in the world today. We kind of walked up it. We were laughing though, as there was a couple and we cheered them for driving down in there noisey car. They were laughing at us cos we didnt have a car, and then as we walked up the road, they had then driven round and done it again, you could tell it was them as the car was so noisey. I would have liked to have jumped in the back of the car just to say that we had been down the road in a car. For me its one of them things i can tick of as something i have seen.
Ooo we found the bridge today, admittedly i was looking last night and this morning whilst i was on the tram at a completely different bridge. Simon was adament i was looking at the wrong one i wasntr convinced though.

Simon was wooed today because near the Seals was a floating Island, apparently its the only one in the world and it had real palm trees on it.

We seem to look like a honeymoon couple so we have decided to keep a tally of the occasions when we have been asked.

1. Sat eating Breakfast with the 3 americans.
2. A man asking for money for the soup kitchens.
3. At the American Customs.

Done it (things to tick off)
Crookedeist street
Seals at Pier 39
Going on a Tram and hanging out the side

06/Nov/06: The Trip to San Francisco

Well, we started our journey in the classiest of places...the Heston Travelodge near Heathrow. Andrea waking myself up at some god unearthly hour to catch a plane to our first stop on our trip: San Francisco :)


Got to the airport in good time, checkin and passport control was fine except that Andrea tried to argue that spraying a load of her clinique stuff out off a 125ml bottle to get it under the 100ml restriction on fluids was ok. The bloke at XRay was having none of it. Our flight itself departed at around 11:00 GMT.


Can't say much about the flight itself apart from the fact that it was long, and wasn't as boring as what you'd think. Always something to watch or do :) Oh, the fact that Andrea had four seats to herself and me three kinda helped too ;) We arrived in San Francisco at around 13:20 EST. Just over three hour flight !!! Needless to say we were knackered but managed to hold out just enough to checkin to our rather "quaint" hotel/B&B and grab something to eat.


When we were looking for something to eat in the evening, we both felt that we're in America we should be eating American. Could we find anything remotely American? No, it was all Italian and Chinese. So we settled for Chinese. The crab in black bean sauce tickled my fancy so i thought i'd try it. They should of called it crab ON black bean sauce. The thing was whole and came with nutcrackers !!


After eating we were pretty much exhausted, so we retired to see what the next day brought us :)