Tuesday, March 21, 2006

USA

Greetings and welcome to what may be the final post on this blog.
We have finally made it to New York where we are staying with my aunt and uncle in brooklyn.

Going back in time somwhat to Fiji...

In this photo you can see a Kava ceremony which is a mildly sedative drink created from the crushed stems and roots of the kava plant. Tourists dont generally find it has much effect, but the Fijians drink it all the time and get absoultely wasted.



Here is the view from our resort's beach.



Onto San Francisco. Here is Lombard Street, the only wiggly street in San Fran. People drive down this all day, for no real reason!



We went over to Alcatraz on a rainy, windy day. Here's Suze in one of the cells.



Had a quick look at the Golden Gate Bridge



We spent 8 days in San Fran and finally worked out that we couldnt afford to get a car so took a Greyhound bus to LA. We stayed three nights in Hollywood and one night in Venice Beach. We stayed very close to Mann's Chinese Theatre which has the concrete handprints outside. My favourite one was this one.



We went on a walking tour around Beverly Hills and Bel Air and saw Brad & Jen's house which they can't sell because it has bad karma, apparently. We also saw the Playboy Mansion and this house, which belongs to Erin Spelling. It has 210 bedrooms, dedicated gift-wrapping room and cost $90M!!!



We went down to Rodeo Drive and two of the people in our group swore they saw 50cent racing away behind us in a sports car.

Spent a day at Venice, but the weather was freezing so there wasn't much beach action and the next day we went off to fabulous Las Vegas. We arrived in the evening and headed straight off to play some poker. We played three times in total and I lost $100, while Suze lost $50, but it wasnt my fault, I just didnt catch the cards. The next day we moved to a hotel(!) in downtown Vegas ($35/night), which was exciting after months in hostels. The four blocks that make up Freemont Street have been covered over with a canopy of 12 million LED's, which they use to make light shows. It was a pretty impressive sight.



We checked out the Strip and saw all the hotels over the next couple of days. My favourite one is the Venetian, an ordinary casino on the ground floor, but go up the stairs... and you find a full replica of the canals of Venice complete with gondaliers and venetian streets.



The newest hotel in town is the Wynn which was very beautiful, but very posh.. and has a full golf course out the back.



Vegas is also home to the drive - thru wedding, and we found numerous chapels with bargain deals of $45/wedding, including a photo and rose. We saw three couples getting married at the famous little white chapel.



We did a day trip to the Grand Canyon, which was a 14hour bus ride, return. Last time I went to the Grand Canyon, it was so hot that by 10am we had to go inside. But this time there was snow on the ground which made it look even better.





After Vegas we spent a night in Omaha to see Nick from uni. Nick took us out for dinner and I had the best steak of my life, it was like butter, amazing. The next morning we went to see his parent's mansion.

Our next stop was Chicago. We celebrated Paddys Day in a very busy Irish bar and this was the only bit of Chicago I saw as I caught a viral infection which meant I couldn't get out of bed for the next two days and I am still recovering from it now. Suze did an afternoon of sightseeing without me and brought back this picture takrn from atop the Sears Tower



So now we are in New York. I have managed to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge, but that's about it. In fact, I am so ill that Suze is my PA and has had to write this all for me. So a big hand for Suze. I am home about 9am Sunday so I expect to see you at Heathrow :)

Saturday, March 04, 2006

Fiji and San Francisco

Bula!

After a hectic few months of travelling the time finally came to relax for a bit so we went to Fiji. We stayed at a nice place called the beach house and did almost nothing of interest for a week and it was lovely. I apologise if this makes for a poor blog entry but i wanted to make america as interesting as possible for you.

Te 2nd of march was the longest day of my life, literally! We spent the day by the beach in Fiji and went to the airport, then we set off at 10.15pm and landed in LA at 1.15pm on the same day! (Dateline crossings are weird) We flew to Los Angeles with no plans other than vague notion that we wanted to get to San Francisco as quickly as possible as LA is monstrously huge and once you go downtown it takes a couple of hours to get out again. After finding the United airline tickets were $370 we thought we were going to have to get the bus overnight but fortunately we found another airline which cost $120 so we flew and managed to get into the hostel we'd booked for the following 2 nights.Then we went out on a pub crawl and ended up in a club until the 3rd March, blimey.

Last night we went to a free show and saw Mix Master Mike (Beastie Boys) at a very cool club. At one point he was mixing 'Smells like teen spirit' with 'Killing in the Name' San Fran has so many cool bars and clubs (and you know i'm not that bothered about clubbing) so we're probably going to stay another night or two.

We'd planned to go to Omaha to see our friend Nick from Uni but that's unfortunately fallen through so now we've got some spare days and no real idea what we want to do, Yosemite and Death Valley are possibilities though we'll probably hire a car and drive down the coast road to LA, if we can find a car cheap enough.

Pictures shall follow but this PC is locked in a box!