Summary: Driving down the Pacific coast in California, watching otters in Monterey and singing karaoke with Vinnie Jones in Santa Monica. Full version: We left Napa wine country with sore heads and weather to match. The first part of our drive down Pacific Coast Highway 1 wasn't quite the California we'd expected - driving rain and dark skies. The scariness of driving feet from a cliff edge in bad weather is more than made up for by the view when the skies cl...

Summary: drinking wine with Sean Connery So we left San Francisco in our rented white Toyota Prius. The licence plate said ACE, and we say Americans don't do irony. Off we headed over the Golden Gate Bridge in our battery powered milk float headed for wine country. An hour's drive and we arrived in the town of Napa. I think there were 4 streets in total. We got completely baffled in the tourist information office by two old biddies who kept talking over eac...

San Francisco summary: walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, went to Alcatraz, saw the 'crookedest street in the world, drank lots of wine. No upgrade on our flight to San Francisco sadly, but we made it from Chicago without incident. We stayed at a hotel in the Fisherman's Wharf area called The Argonaut. I could be wrong, but I think it had a nautical theme. Everything in the entire hotel was ship-related, including portholes in our cabin-style room, seashel...

Hi everyone, We're currently in Santa Monica, L.A. having driven down the Pacific coast from San Francisco over the last week. Sorry we've not written anything yet but we've been on the move every day so we've not really had time to stop off in internet cafes. We're keeping notes with old-fashioned pen and paper though, so we'll write a full update as soon as we get time. We had an abortive attempt at uploading photos a few days ago, which is why you might ha...