Touch down USA! (over three weeks ago..)
Officially in to the swing of travelling in the USA. Jack and I flew in to Phoenix on March the 10th after 26 hours of travel!! Needless to say we were shattered. I actually presumed our jet lag would settle in a few days, but i think this is the worst we had it, it took us atleast a week to really settle into it. Phoenix was fun, we actually stayed in Scottsdale. We were couch surfing at a gentleman called Beau's house. He was very pleasant if not a little strange.. but we shouldn't judge. It was very kind of him to let us stay! We actually didn't get up to too much here, we spent the first five days really catching up on sleep.Jack has a friend in Pheonix so we caught up with him which was nice.
On from Phoenix we were due to travel to Vegas by bus. I had printed our tickets the night before. Which clearly printed a departure time of 12:15pm. We arrived at the bus station at 11:30am only to be told the bus time had been changed and had left an hour ago! (typical greyhound service apparently) The next available bus was at 11:15pm, it would take 12 hours and it would mean changing bus 5 times!! We decided to opt out of this, it woudl have been a nightmare journey. Jack and I thought it would be best if we just paid to rent a car and drove to vegas ourselves. We found a deal online and booked to hire an economy compact car, the guy at the desk was hilarious. I can only describe him as Jonah Hill's twin!! (hilarious for those of you who know who he is) Jack and he seemed to have some sort of 'male banter' flowing. We thought he was joking when he said ''I'll just go ahead and give you a mustang!'' We discovered this was no joke when we found it in our alloted space! I was terrified to drive the beast.. I don't think i went above 50mph. We got to Vegas pretty late but decided to drive down the strip in our Mustang.. (how pretentious of us!) and park it in Valet at The Mirage. Wow... Vegas is unlike anywhere I have ever been. But I have to say I absolutly loved it, we had three nights here and enjoyed them all. We did the typically tourist things.. got a photo by the vegas sign, the New York New York rollercoaster etc.
From Vegas we went to LA. Here we stayed with Dad's friend Ira, I hadn't seen him since I was 12! Ira and his wife are charming, they took us out for dinner that evening so we got to do some catching up then. We had 3 days in LA, we hired a car and visited Venice Beach, Santa Monica Pier, Beverly Hills, Hollywood etc. Rodeo Drive is quite something, and the houses in Beverly Hills are like castles. How the other half live hey.. People seem to have this wonderful pre-concieved perception of LA being this ultra glam place. Don't get me wrong Beverly Hills is quite something, but the oh so famous Hollywood is a dive!!
From LA jack and I managed to get a free relocation vehicle to drive Highway 1 all the way up to San Francisco. You can imagine my fear when we realised we had booked an RV.. a 24ft long 14ft high one at that! Certainly a test of driving skills. I made sure it was Jack's turn to drive when we reached the windy road from Hurst Castle, through Big Sur and up to Carmel. The drive though, is absolutly stunning.The most beautiful coast road I have ever been on by far. I am so pleased that we got to do this. We stopped on the way, our first night was spent near Santa Barbara, our second in Big Sur and our final in Santa Cruz. We went to a few beaches etc on the way, and found some giant elephant seals! Those few days have been some of our favourite so far I think.
Next stop San Fran! What a fab city, we loved it here. We spent alot of time around Fishermans Wharf, we also hired a tandem bike and cycled over the Golden Gate Bridge into Sausalito. This was a great day, and we had amazing weather for it. Pictures to follow.. We were keen to get on a trip out to Alcatraz Island but when we went to book it, it was full up until the end of April. I didn't realise that It would be that popular. Better luck next time. We had three nights here too and stayed with a friend of mine called Sarah who I had met travelling in Australia. So we got to hang around with her a few evenings, she took us to a talk at a small library in MilBrae, Authors of famous travel books/blogs were speaking. How appropriate it was!
From Sanfran we made our way to Portland. We had two days here, we made our way to Powells book store, one of the largest in the world apparently, spent some time at the Portland Arts/crafts market and had the best $1.50 taco's we've ever had! Then it was Portland to Seattle by plane.. We have had a blast in Seattle, we have actually ended up here for 5 nights. The first four we stayed with a young girl called Melodi from couch surfing, she lives with her boyfriend and a few others. They were all good fun, so we got to do some things with them. In seattle we made our way down to Pike Place Market, Freemont, the Seattle public Library has some really cool architecture and the decor inside is really fun, pictures to follow of this also..Another friend of mine Zach, who I met when I first landed in Bangkok was back from a 6month post in Alaska (He is a Marine Biologist) we stayed with him our last night had a blast, he took us out with all his co-workers to a district caleld Ballard were we spent most of the evening playing 25c Skee-Ball!
Next stop Denver...
Ill follow up once we get over to Miami.
Sorry if there is any awful mistakes! I always try to type too fast.This website doesn't highlight mistakes and I can never pick them all up reading back through.
xx
