Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
After Hawaii it was time to visit California. I would arrive in LA and depart from San Francisco and there were 10 days in between. So, in between I could do whatever I want. Many people told me that San Diego is a really nice place, so that was where I certainly wanted to go. It seemed very nice to me to do the coastal route 1 to cruise along the ocean. However, I left my driver's license in the Netherlands and you have to be 25 to hire a car in the USA. So, unfortunately this was not possible. The route became Los Angeles - San Diego - Las Vegas - San Francisco.
I started in LA and arrived at night at 10 pm. Emma, a Danish girl, was sleeping in the same room and we decided to go the Santa Monica pier and Venice Beach the next day. We took the bus to the Santa Monica pier the next day. We were lucky, it was very sunny. We ended up at a Beach far too big for all the people who where there, but it really looked good. The Santa Monica pier looked nice as well. We walked to Venice Beach from there on and saw many strange people from there on. Venice beach is really something special, probably more than 50 percent of the people walking there had used too many drugs in their life, their were so many weirdos, it's unbelievable. We encountered a guy trying to launch his rap career, and Emma, who is bad at saying no, ended up buying a cd from him for 5 dollars. After we had seen Venice Beach we wanted to gp back to our hostel. We got out our recommend stop, but didn't recognize the place, so we went asking the locals at the gas station.. The guy over there told us to stick with him otherwise we would probably get robbed... We ended up in a not very good place of LA.. We stayed with him until the next bus came and we got into the bus.. We were the only white people over there and more than 50 percent was a junkie in that bus. Welcome to LA.. A lot of people warned me about LA already and they were right.. LA is not a nice plac to be if you are a tourist on a budget..
In the evening we went to Art of Walk, which is a monthly event, where galleries stay open until late.. We were told that there was music going on, but we didn't see any, so that was quite dissapointing.. Some art was nice though..
The next day I planned to go to San Diego and Emma decided to join me, we took the Greyhound bus, which was located in a poor alley of LA, we didn't know that. Apparently, only poor people travel with the Greyhound in the USA. Sounds like good transportation for backpackers.. So, we went to San Diego for a really cheap price, it was not luxurious at all, but ah well, we got to our destination. San Diego looked much better than LA, and it was.. The architecture of the buildings was very nice and the atmosphere was much better than in LA. We stayed in the Lucky d's hostel, which was a very nice art hostel. The hostel looked like a museum. The first night we went to a baseball game of the San Diego Padres against the Colorado Rocks. It took some time to understand the game and when we did it was actually still a pretty boring game, it is very slow-paced. The stadium was very impressive though and it was just like in the movies with vendors walking along and trying to sell hotdogs, icecreams and drinks.
The next day I ran around the city to see San Diego. The buildings are really beautiful and they have an area that is called, the Gaslamp area. It is a very nice area with bars, restaurants and shops. I also did some shopping and bought a Diesel jacket that looked almost the same as the one I lost. San Diego is also famous for its Mexican food. The city is only 15 minutes from Mexico and thus has many Mexican inhabitants. They definitely know hoe to make good food, I ended up eating Mexican food for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
After San Diego I went to Las Vegas, Sin City. I went with the Greyhound bus at 8 pm and arrived at 5.30 am in Las Vegas. The greyhound bus is not the best place to fall asleep so I was exhausted. My hostels reception opened after 8 am, so first I had to wait at the Greyhound station without falling asleep, because I didn't want my bags to be unattended. Then I started the 30 minute walk to the hostel with my bags. Las Vegas is in the middle of the desert, they have 300 days of sun in a year, so that walk was pretty hot. I could only check-in after 2, so I dropped my bags at the reception and crashed on the couch. I fell asleep in less than a minute and 2 hours later someone of the staff woke me up, because I was not allowed to sleep on the couch. Still restless I had to wait longer for 2 pm. When it was finally 2 I went to my room and took a dive straight into my bed. But first I had set the alarm for the tour on The Strip that evening.
We went to the Strip in Mexican style.. We squeezed in around 25 persons in a van which was supposed to be for around 8 persons max. Not the most comfortable ride ever. We started somewhere on a high parking lot with a nice view over the complete strip. We went to several casinos like the Bellagio (Ocean's eleven) and Caesars Palace (Hangover part 1). They had shows in every casino. The strangest was that you were allowed to bring your own drinks everywhere and the drinks of the casino are free if you are gambling. Even mixed drinks. All you have to do is give a one dollar tip. They want you to be drunk so that you will gamble your money. I took one gamble and put four dollars on red, I lost.. That was all my gambling in Las Vegas, I guess it's not in the nature of an econometrician to bet money when you know the odds are against you. At least I can say that I gambled in Las Vegas. The driver of our Mexican van got drunk and so I had to walk back from the Strip to the hostel, this took 1.5 hour.. I put my alarm on 8.15 because the next day I would go to the Grand Canyon with 2 German guys I met in San Diego. It was hard to get out of bed, but I did. I ate my breakfast and then I saw a FB message on my phone 'sorry martin we are not going anymore today, we are hungover'. Schade Deutschland.. Fortunately I met some people the day before on the tour of the Strip and they heard that I wanted to go the Grand Canyon. Spontaneously we ended up hiring a car with the 4 of us. Ambra, Joanne and I believe the 4th was Scott. It took more than 5 hours to arrive at the Grand Canyon, but it was so worth it! The views were stunning. The Grand Canyon is definitely the most impressive piece of nature I have seen in my life. And I think that that is quite a statement after all the beautiful places I have seen on this trip. We left Las Vegas at 11 am and got back at 2.30 am. A lot of respect for Ambra, who drove the whole way, because she was the only one who had her passport with her!
After a well-deserved sleep it was time to do a workout in the outside gym of the hostel, actually it was mot a gym, just some dumbbells and a benchpress, but still, it felt good to lift some iron again. I got a lift from 2 guys from Colorado to the Greyhound station and got into the bus for a 15(!) hours drive to San Francisco.
The hostel was very nice and the breakfast very good, but above all, San Francisco is a very nice city. It looks really beautiful and the amtmosphere is great. All American cities are super organized by the way. They only have horizontal amd vertical streets and all those streets are one-way streets, this is very beneficial for the circulation of the traffic. Traffic jams are really rare. In the afternoon I really needed my sleep, because I didn't get much sleep in the Greyhound bus again... In the evening we went for a pubcrawl with the hostel. We had a nice group and it was fun. I met 2 guys from London, Scott and Jel and the day after I went to a bar again with them and some other people. We definitely had good fun. We ended the night in a restaurant where I met 2 California girls whom I would meet later on again.
Everybody told me that 3 days was not enough to see San Francisco and thus I decided to run around the city instead of walking. The first day I had only been sleeping and I had to make up for that lost time. I ran to the coast at the west, and ran, and ran, and ran without seeing the ocean. Apparently the map changed in scale after one third (on the map). I didn't notice that, so instead of running for a hour I ended up running more than 2 hours to the ocean... Nice, because I was only on a quarter of my track. Just like in LA, San Francisco has a giant beach. This beach was surrounded by beautiful nature though. I ran further north to the amazing Golden Gate bridge and suddenly ended up on a nude beach. There were flying d*** everywhere. It felt pretty awkward to take my pink camera out over there to photograph the bridge, so I hurried up with taking the photos. I continued my run fast, ran along the bridge and the Alcatraz prison and got back to my hostel. I had been away for something like 7 hours. That was definitely a good and exhausting track.
The next day was 4/20, in Europe we would say 20/4, in other words, the 20th of April. In the USA that's a special day, namely the national weed day. Apparently the best place to be was the Golden gate park in San Francisco. I hadn't been there yet and thus I decided to go to see this event. I didn't really know what o expect. I tried to meet up with the California girls from the restaurant (Teresa and Chelsea), but I was late... (Sorry girls, they told me that the bus took only 30 minutes instead of 45). So I went into the park and tried to search them, but what I saw there was unbelievable... The park was completely packed with people, you couldn't even walk normaly. And almost everyone was smoking weed. Even the children playground, where children were still playing was occupied by weed-smokers. That was really crazy to see, even for a Dutch guy. There were ten-thousands of people I guess, when you were standing in the middle of the park you were surrounded by a see of people. After walking several laps around the park, the incredible happened. I found Teresa and Chelsea. Actually they saw me first. We chilled on the grass with a friend of theirs as well, Bianca and we waited for 4.20 pm. At that moment everybody started to smoke his or her joint. There was a massive fume hanging above the park. I needed to fly to NY that evening and the girls were so nice that offered me a ride to the hostel. We said goodbye and my time in California was over... I had only one week left for NY and Iceland. Time really flies when you are having fun.
- comments