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L.A., California
After a long flight we landed in L.A. and were able to have another go at Tuesday 22nd February 2011. We'd love to say we did something special with our buy one get one free day but in reality, by the time we arrived at our hostel in West Hollywood we were exhausted. We watched a bit of tv in the communal area and caught up on the news before heading out for some dinner before bed.
Feeling refreshed we got up the next morning and took a bus to Hollywood. We arrived to find lots of things being set up, we had no idea that the Oscars were taking place the day we leave L.A! Nevermind. We walked down Hollywood Boulevard and looked at all the different stars in the walk of fame before turning round and walling back up the other side of the street. Once back in the center of Hollywood we went to Sid Grauman's Chinese Theatre, home to all the hand and foot prints set in concrete of celebrities past and present and the location of many premieres. We paid $2 each (which went to charity) to have a 5 minute tour inside the lobby of the theatre which was beautifully themed to go along with the exterior of the building. From Hollywood Blvd there were spots where you could see up through the buildings and spot the Hollywood sign up in the hills. We didn't pay to be taken closer, nor did we pay to go on a 'tour of the stars homes' of which there were many companies offering. You could see the many houses dotted around up in the hills that belonged to the celebs and the uber-rich, and there was constantly a helicopter in the sky, usually more than one. It was a very strange and surreal experience going from Robinson Crusoe Island to Hollywood, Los Angeles!
The following day was a little more relaxing with much less walking where we headed into downtown L.A. Coincidently there was a wrestler in town signing copies of his autobiography so after briefly looking in a few shops we went and queued to meet him. Before we joined the queue we got a coffee in Starbucks where we saw Mike Vallely, a pro skateboarder. As we were in the city all the men in suits had no idea who he was but Andy recognized him and his suspicions were confirmed when someone asked him for a photo. After meeting Chris Jericho (the wrestler who incidentally is the friendliest famous person we've ever met) this meant we could strike up a tally of 2 famous people spotted so far.
For day 3 we headed out of the city to the coast and Venice Beach. It's actually been really cold (we're not used to it anymore!) so we won't be swimming, we just thought we'd head there and take a look. On the way there the bus took us past Beverly Hills, home to many celebrities and hundreds of houses you see in films. Every street was lined with huge gated houses, it was quite a sight. We arrived in Venice Beach to the opposite. It was the same as very run down seaside town in England, it's certainly seen better days, and sadly there were homeless people everywhere, more than we've ever seen at one place before. It was a little upsetting/frustrating seeing 'Millionaires Row' only a mile or so from literally hundreds of homeless people who really need help. Anyhow we walked along the beach front (in the rain) all the way to Santa Monica where we warmed up with a drink and Nikki bought a woolly hat. America has been the coldest country we've been in so far and it will only get colder as we head north. Unfortunately we aren't packed very well for cold weather!
Day 4 - After getting absolutely soaked the previous evening while finding some dinner we were pleased to wake up to some sunshine. It was still a bit chilly but the sun added a bit of warmth. As we'd taken buses to travel to other parts of the city, for today we explored the area near us called The Grove which is an area home to various shops and restaurants. We found a 'dog bakery', a shop selling nothing but cupcakes, brownies, chocolates, cakes and all sorts of goodies - all for consumption by dogs! Quite strange but fun too, especially as there were lots of dogs outside socialising and taking advantage of the free water and 'doggy toilets', 2 patches of fake grass for their use! Only in L.A.! A short time later we spotted 2 more celebrities who again were people we like. We saw Kat Von D (of the Miami Ink & LA Ink TV shows fame) who is one of the best and well known tattoo artists in the world, having lunch with Bam Margera (of the MTV and film series 'Jackass' fame) which was funny and kind of strange seeing then sat there after having seen them on TV for years. We wandered the shops, had lunch and just took our time enjoying the day rather than rushing around like previous days.
Day 5 - Today was our last day in L.A. and also the day of the Oscars! We'd had no idea the Oscars were taking place until we arrived in the city as we may have stayed a day longer had we known. We are using Greyhound America to travel around the States and were booked on a midday bus to Las Vegas which would be leaving from Hollywood meaning after we had checked in, we had an hour or so to wander back up Hollywood Blvd. We walked back along the star paved sidewalk to the Nokia Theatre where the ceremony takes place. The streets were closed and there we barriers everywhere but we were able to walk close enough to see the finished set up and the red carpet (Andy found a section of red carpet 2 days previously that hadn't yet been covered up so he can say he stood on the red carpet of red carpets) so it was quite nice to be able to end our stay here seeing a true Hollywood tradition on the biggest day in the A-list calendar.
Las Vegas, Nevada
The journey to Vegas took us through the Mojave Desert and we were fortunate that the route of the bus took us past the airplane graveyard that you may have heard about or seen on TV. It is where companies send their planes when they can no longer afford to fly them or want to remove them from their fleet due to age or cost of upkeep, and all these planes just sit there rusting away in the middle of nowhere. For anyone who watched the TV show 'Lost', this is where they bought the sections of plane to use in the show. A huge waste of material but interesting to see nonetheless. As the journey continued we could see where Vegas was many many miles before we arrived. It was dark and although the city was hidden behind a mountain there was an unmistakeable glow which was as strong as the beginning of a sun rise. The light pollution was incredible, in a bad way of course. We stayed in the Stratosphere which is a tower that sits at the top of 'The Strip' and has a viewing platform at a height of 1000 feet, giving some amazing 360 degree views whether day or night of Vegas and the mountains that surround it.
Our time in Vegas is a little hard to explain as it will sound as though we did nothing, when in reality we left our hotel in the morning and didn't return until the evening. What we were doing was simply walking up and down the strip and going into all the other hotels, which always had a casino inside of course, and wandering around their 'lobbies'. The hotels along the strip are extravagant to say the least, all with a different theme, some of whom's theme was simply 'expensive'! Here is a brief rundown of the different hotels we went in, but to explain what each had to offer would take forever. Again please refer to our old friend Google to take a look at them all, it's worth doing so.
On our first day we went to the top of the Stratosphere tower and looked at Vegas below us in the day time. We also went inside the Sahara hotel, the Flamingo, the beautiful Luxor (complete with huge shiny black pyramid), and the even more upmarket Mandalay Bay.
On Day 2, we headed to Treasure Island, the Coca-Cola store, the M&M store (Andy has now been to all 4 of them), New York New York (complete with a smaller scale N.Y. skyline & Statue of Liberty), MGM (which has the MGM Lion outside it, which is the largest bronze statue in America). Once it was dark we watched the water fountain display which is set to music outside the front of the Bellagio hotel, we watched the Volcano outside of the Mirage hotel erupt, went into Caesar's Palace (the only hotel where we were stared at in a 'you can't afford to stay here' way), before heading to Treasure Island where we had bought tickets to the Cirque du Soleil show, Mystere. The show was everything you'd expect from Cirque, music made especially for the show with the most amazing gymnasts doing many different kinds of things whether it be hanging from a trapeze above your head or rising out of the floor, you weren't quite sure where to look for fear of missing something! It was quite expensive but well worth it.
Day 3 however was different to our other days in Las Vegas as for the first and only time we left the strip. Not only that, we went to an entirely different state. We jumped over into Arizona as we had booked ourselves on a trip to see one of the world's natural wonders, the Grand Canyon. We left our hotel at 5.30am, were at the south side of the Canyon for just over a couple of hours, and arrived back at our hotel at midnight! It was a very long day spent almost entirely on a bus just getting there and back but again, worth it. On the way we stopped at a bridge that overlooked the Hoover Dam which we were pleased about seeing and we had 15 minutes here before continuing on. After MANY hours we finally arrived and were stunned to find large sections of it covered in snow, in Arizona?! Unexpected but it made it all the more special. The views were of course stunning and unexplainable to be honest. It's a place you really have to see for yourself to get any perspective on. We were at the south rim which is the widest section of the canyon making it even more impressive, and making us feel even more insignificant! As far as the eye could see both left and right was this enormous gorge with rocks of various shapes and colours forming the cliffs, and by looking straight ahead the other side was almost 10miles away! We stopped at 2 lookouts while we were here so our view wasn't of just one section. After taking lots of photos at the first viewpoint we decided to just sit down and 'look' to try and take it all in at the second point. It felt quite special being there, and we are thrilled to have seen it for ourselves.
Day 4 we were back doing our tour of this one road! First we headed to the iconic 'Welcome to Las Vegas' sign for the obligatory photo, before heading to Paris (complete with a slightly smaller replicas of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe) before heading to another show which we had got free tickets for. It was a comedy/magician show by a guy called Nathan Burton who had gained some celebrity by doing very well on America's Got Talent. The illusions were amazing as he made various things (including showgirls) appear and disappear in various boxes and contraptions, before the finale in which an enormous statue appeared out of nowhere - mind blowing! After coming out of the show the streets were lined with more people than usual. NASCAR and all its fans were in town, and the huge trucks that carry the cars were about to drive down the strip. We hung around, got talking to these very passionate Americans and watched as around 50 trucks drove past all blaring their horns! Then it was on to the Venetian (complete with canals and gondolas as it replicates Venice) before popping into the Palazzo where we did our first and only gambling, however it was with $15 worth of free money we had been given to play with. Andy won around $2.50 on the slot machines and Nikki came away with $9, and all of it complete profit! After this for our last evening here we headed to the very end of the strip into downtown Las Vegas where they have the 'Freemont St Experience'. It's a street running across about 4 blocks full of shops, casinos, restaurants & street performers, but the unique feature is that it is 'enclosed' with an enormous LED roof which has all sorts of things playing on it. Once an hour something special happens, in our case there was the sound of a lightning strike, everything went dark and then suddenly the 'sky' erupted into a 5 minute long Queen tribute with a medley of their songs playing and videos of them above our heads! To end our evening we returned to our hotel and headed back up to the top so that we could see the city at night. It was quite amazing seeing all the lights of the hotels at night (especially the beacon of light that fires straight out of the top of Luxor's pyramid) but just as pretty were the lights from the streets and houses that surround the epicentre of Vegas. It isn't until you are up high that you see just how big the city is, even if it is in the middle of nowhere! A very nice and peaceful way to spend our last night here.
We thought we would be leaving this morning but after heading downtown to the bus station we changed our ticket to an overnight bus meaning we had one more afternoon in town. In comparison to previous days we relaxed a little and just did the last few bits and bobs we hadn't done or seen already. We went back to New York New York so that Nikki could ride the rollercoaster that runs in and out of the hotel. "After years of wanting to ride this coaster it was really disappointing - I came away with a headache because it was so shaky, and the carriages are so badly designed I couldn't see in front of me- $14 wasted! Nevermind." After this we went into the hotel next door, Excalibur, which is a huge castle with a medieval theme inside. Then it was time for dinner so we treated ourselves by going back to the Stratosphere and paying to have their large buffet dinner that had all kinds of food, plus lots of varieties of cake and cupcakes for dessert! It was slightly indulgent but we deserved a decent meal after living off fast food for 5 days!
San Francisco, California
We only had a couple of days in San Fran which was preceeded by the bus journey from Las Vegas which saw us back in L.A. for half an hour before traveling north and into the Bay Area. The end of the journey was nice as went across a bridge twice the size of the Golden Gate which gave us views of the city, of Alcatraz, and of the Golden Gate itself. We'd been traveling for about 18hours and had had little sleep so we didn't do very much on our first afternoon in the city.
In order to get around for the next 2 days we bought a pass that was valid on both the trams and busses making it easy for us to get around. We hopped on our first San Francisco tram which took us up and over one of the city's famous steep hills an down to the Fisherman's Wharf area, full of touristy shops, boats of all descriptions and of course lots of seafood. We got off 1 stop before the wharf to take a look at one of the worlds most famous streets, the 'crookedest street in the world in fact. You may have seen it in films or on TV before, it's the one on a hill that zig zags and winds it's way down. It was smaller than we'd envisioned it but looked quite fun, if not tricky to drive down. After this we had a nice walk around the Wharf area including heading down to the end of the main jetty which is now home to several sea faring vessels, some of which are hundreds of years old and were used in shipping to and from Europe. For dinner we were back near our hostel on the main shopping street and went to Loving Hut in the Westfield shopping centre's foodcourt. Loving Hut have branches all over the world and sell only Vegan food. Andy had a noodle salad type dish with mock beef that not only looked & tasted like beef but had the same tough/chewy consistency, and Nikki plumped for the old faithful, chicken nuggets and sweet potato fries. It was delicious, relatively cheap and extremely accessible (in fact there were 3 Vegan places, this one, a restaurant and an upmarket place all within 1km of our hostel), American Vegans and Veggies are very lucky.
The following day we visited the world famous former correctional facility - Alcatraz. The ferry ride only takes around 15mins as the island is only just over a mile out into the bay. It is a protected site and is now home for many types of sea bird. After arriving we went into the basement of the large building that housed the workers and their families. We watched a video made by the Discovery Channel on the history of the place as we only know it as the prison but there is much more to it. It started life as a fort in the American Civil War and there are still cannons there today. Once the war was over (California never did get attacked) the military handed it over to the justice system who made it what it is today. Since it closed in 1962 there was one more notable occupation made by the Native Americans, the Indians who weren't being fairly treated and were quite oppressed. They occupied the island for around 3 years whilst protesting against their treatment and to try and gain equal rights. They were eventually removed but it brought their plight to the publics attention and thankfully did cause a change for the better. The tour of the prison itself was self-guided though we were helped along by an audio tour which was really good. Both ex-inmates and guards told stories and provided information as we wandered through the main cell block, the dining hall and the cells set aside for solitary confinement. It was a very cold place and must have been a very tough place to be incarcerated, however there was one or two 'perks'. Alcatraz was the only prison in America (at that time) which had warm showers. Inmates were also encouraged to eat as much as they wanted at meal times. There was also no weights in the exercise yard. Why? Well a person used to warm water and who may be a little unfit would have zero chance of braving entering the freezing water, let alone making the swim to shore. There was one escape however that was pretty much perfect. We sat and listened to the entire build up to the escape attempt, how the inmates got out, what they used to do so etc etc. It was meticulous and almost surgical in terms of how they pulled it off (I'm afraid we'd be here forever if we explained it all to you but it's a great story and well worth looking up. We think it was in '61 or '62, involved 3 men, 2 of them brothers, & it's the basis for the film 'Escape from Alcatraz' for anyone who wants to learn about it). We were able to go inside some of the cells which were single man cells and very small, barely room to even walk up and down alongside the bed. But, the (on average) 250 inmates were here for a reason, because their original prisons didn't want them due to their behaviour. The reason it was dubbed home to 'the worst of the worst' is because upon opening a letter was sent to the 5 largest U.S. prisons where the wardens were told 'send us your 50 worst men, the ones you want to get rid of' and so, Alcatraz was born! We could talk about more as we learnt lots, it was a really great place to visit.
Due to it being really quite cold and as we were tired from doing a lot of walking, we didn't actually go to the Golden Gate Bridge. We had some really nice views of it while on the ferry over to Alcatraz so we don't feel too bad that we didn't actually wall on it. This ends our time in San Francisco and in California. The next few destinations will be towns not known for tourism, time to get off the beaten track a little.
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