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 :)