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Hellooooo,
so we made it to the land of surf and beautiful people. Had a very crazy few weeks here in California trying to fit everything in, which is impossible as there's sooooo much fun stuff here. Totally fallen in love with this place, its got everything from giant valleys, deserts, huge cities and loads of beautful artsy beach towns, and AMAZING mexican food, i wish it wasnt nearly impossible to get a living visa over here grrrrrr!
So our trip began in foggy San Fransisco, where we spent a week in a strange faulty towers esque hotel. As we've been deprived of cheese and decent breakfast cereal for so long first thing we did was explore the supermarket, sad i know, but they have so much fun food and whole isles for peanut butter yum! Spent the week exploring san fran and doing a lot of walking around their ridiculous hills watching lazy people on the cable cars. Trying to park on one of these was stupid it was almost verticle! Did a few toursity things like the Alcatraz prison tour which was awesome after just having seen 'Escape from Alcatraz' and saw the smelly seals sunbathing on Pier 39 stinky! Definately had a bit of reverse culture shock adjusting back to oversized portions, and loud people, everyone's super friendly over here too. San fransico's got loads of character with pretty Victorian houses evrywhere, loads of different districts like Italian, latino, a HUGE china town, japan town too which was starnge for us!
Road trip!
(tip if you're planning on driving here ever, they're all nutters who dont indicate, text while driving as its legal in some states , and constantly pull out right in front of you arghhhh!)
anyway rant over apart from that i''d recommend driving here to anyone its amazing having the freedom to go anywhere, cheap petrol............ we made it all the way down the coast and back and started our adventure in Santa Cruz.........
Being poor travelers, and also keen to meet some more people, we then started our couch surfing adventure. First stop along the coast road was a lot sunnier Santa Cruz, an quirky chilled out beach town, with loads of boutiques and a few friendly werido's. Emily was our lovely host here and she was great, showed us all the fun things to do, had a campfire on the beach and was introduced to the wonder of the s'more (marshmellow and chocolate sandwhiced in a graham cracker). Surfing is the thing to do here like everyone's at it and the sea gets pretty crowded, especially at the best bits like Steamers Lane. I was happy watching with the rest of the crowd, the rocks looked way to scary down there! The seals seemed to be having a good time to, their great little surfers! Checked out Pleasure point too, chris went in and braved the locals while I tried to spot Jack O'neil who apparently surfs here a lot. hehe I have bigger feet than him and Laird Hamiliton, good surfers have tiny feet accroding to the surfers concrete hands and feet walk of fame.
San Luis Obispo
Next stop was another student town by the beach, which took us ageeeeeeeeeeees along the coast road, partly because we kept getting distracted by things like elephant seals and strawberry picking and partly driving super slow so we didnt fly off the super scary cliff roads, Chris was well scared driving along here! Stayed with another couch surfer Kate for a couple of nights and after watching Sideways, have a new found interest in fine wine, hehe I'm now a wine snob no more white zinfandel for me! Visiting the wineries was amazing, especially the tasting part :) its was really cool seeing all the places in that film as well and enjoying a tipsy picnic by the vinery.
Carmel
Its like the Prestbury of California here, very very posh and quaint and they know it. Beautiful all the same, and cute hansel and gretal cottages you can stay in if you're a millionaire. Started off my body boarding with a lot of water in the brain, and a grazed bottom, after Chris kindly pushed me into a big wave, and then head butted me, lots of fun though!!
Santa Barbara
After a bit more wine tasting, we were on our way down the Mediteranian feeling, red-tiled roofes of Santa Barbara, a LOT of rich people living here and their microclimate meant it was even warmer here. I did do some John Cleese spotting but he was no where to be seen boooo! Ahhhh I'd so recommend couch surfing in America they all have pools too, who needs explensive hotels eh?! Our host here was Mark, and ex-army guy who suprised me with his fondness of cupcakes, they do have some amazing cupcakery's here though and I got lots of 'market research' for my future cake shop done here :)
Hollywood (sucks!!!!)
yep hollywoods a hole, full of fake boobs and wonky faces, soo not glamourous and kinda sad here, the streets were dirty and full of tourists like u'd expect and sooooo many people trying to get you on a crappy tour. Weird because 10 mins drive down the road and you're in celebratey ville and the posh mansions of Beverly Hills. Universal Studios was awesome though and did the whole studio tour thing, every ride there made me wanna puke especially the simpsons one.
Orange County
Yep its full of beautiful rich people just like the program, and was a lot nicer than downtown hollywood. Really artsy and full of beautiful beaches here, I especilly liked the artwalk in Long beach, everyone out enjoying art, food and music in the streets and free wine in all the galleries which we like. Heather and her housemate Eva hosted us here and were both lovely, funny gals who were very good to us, so we made em toad in the hole to say thanks, which went wrong, i blame the KP he was not very good. My first attempt at making cupcakes by following the recipe properly went well though, vegan cupcakes are suprisingly scrumptious! loved it here they had a pool too lucky things, and took us out to the bars where we had really BIG beers in a bar full of peanut shells. Seeing the Wedge at Newport beach was awesome!!!!! the guys surfing/bodyboarding/skimboarding this thing are either crazy or stupid but they knew what they were doing and draw in a lot of crowds. these waves are huge and insane and just come at them from everywhere, a lot of people getting squished! Hungtington beach aka 'surf city' was pretty cool too and the sea was super crowed here too.
Yosemite
Stayed in Merced a werid, werid town absolutely NOTHING here! you may wonder why we chose to come to this inbred town of vegetables and tumbleweed..... well we used this place a base to get to the National Park of Yosemite, absolutely, totally worth the drive it is spectacular there. Never seen anything like it and GSCE geography actaully came in usefull for something, hanging valleys, U-shaped valleys and all that jazz, glacial erosion oooo get me i remembered! The valley is gigantanormous and we hiked around to see the views from up top. It was so worth being eaten alive by my old friends the mossy's to get the views up here. And very proud of Chris overcoming his fear of hights kind of and posing on the end of the cliff for a photo arghhhhhhhh sooooooooooooooo scary!!!! The hike up a waterfall was my favourite got soaked by all the spray which was lovely, and saw a rainbow.
Soo we're now just on our way back to San Fransisco to drop of our rental car, which is no longer super sparkly white and full of sand oops. Just writing this in the car which is making me car sick so y'all better appriciate it! A few more days left here to see a free music festival with Aretha Franklin random?! do the goldengate bridge, and then we're back to Japan for the last part of our trip. Wont be long now and we'll be back to reality eek :), but will get to see everyone i really miss which i'm looking forward too.
love
Holly
xxxx
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