San Diego Zoo

Los Angeles and Las Vegas

In LA we planned to stay at Santa Monica beach, but everywhere was full up being between Christmas and New Years, so we went further down the beach and stayed at Venice beach. It was hot and sunny - around the mid 70s.

We didn’t have much interest in spending too much time in the major parts of LA, but did a trip in to Hollywood to see the walk of fame and all those things you see on TV. We only saw a small percentage of the stars - it was far too hot and crowded to see the whole lot.





































Reading up before we went to see them we found out that there are about 5 Ruths on the Walk and no Hamishs. In fact, pretty much no one in America had heard the name Hamish - it was pretty odd - it may have well not been an English name.

From Hollywood we went on to our next stop - Las Vegas.

It’s hard to really believe Las Vegas is just in the middle of the desert, with nothing around it, but it really is. Driving there, you see it in the distance from so far away because there are no other towns to block your view. We had timed our drive so that we would arrive at night, and see all the neon lights glowing.













We even managed to combine two Vegas sights when we arrived at the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign, as there was a bride and groom just finishing their photos in front of it.

From there we checked into our hotel (the MGM Grand, chosen for its great deal and because it features in so many movies) and explored the complex. I think we did more walking in Vegas than in anywhere else...the casinos are huge, and the Strip is so long! It was incredible to see, although just one day and two nights were more than enough for me! It’s also incredible that they are still building at least two more massive casinos on the Strip, and there is plenty of construction going on elsewhere. Perhaps gambling is the only good business in a recession?

The following day, we walked along the Strip and went into many of the casinos...most have some kind of feature to try to draw you in, so we saw the lions in the MGM Grand (these animals looked pretty sad), flamingos at Flamingos, the pyramid at Luxor, the Eiffel Tower at Paris Las Vegas, the skyscrapers at New York New York, the Roman sculptures at Caesar’s, and the Venetian streets at the Venetian.

That night we watched the Bellagio fountain - this goes every 15 minutes at night, and is a choreographed water show. This particular one was set to Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On...from there, we watched the Mirage volcano, which explodes on schedule every night.

























All in all, Las Vegas is a spectacle, but there isn’t much substance to it. It was worth the drive to see it, but I don’t think we will be going back anytime soon.

Santa Barbara, California

This was the first city we had stopped in that had had a hugely Spanish influence on the architecture. It was a really attractive town, with a large pedestrian shopping area with lots of boutique shops and restaurants.

We had our first Mexican food here, at a restaurant just down the road from our hotel. It was a treat to be given free tortilla chips and salsa to start the meal, instead of bread, but we would soon get used to it!

In the morning, we walked around the courthouse. This incredible building is a working court and chambers, as well as the administration office. It was quite special, and it offered us a fantastic view over the city, and we spent a long time looking around.























































From there, we headed to the Mission Santa Barbara, our first Mission. These churches were built by the Spanish, and there are around 15 in southern California. They are in various states of repair, and the Santa Barbara one is considered one of the best. Sadly, we had to content ourselves with the outside, as we arrived during mass, and couldn’t afford the time to wait.

























Instead, we walked along the pier, which was restored after fire destroyed the middle of it several years ago. The pier doesn’t have much to recommend it, being filled with restaurants, tourist shops, and many of the city’s homeless. However, the views back to the beach were lovely, and we shared a small fish & chips at the beach.

Meanwhile, back in the USA

Near Santa Cruz we found the Natural Bridges state park - a haven for Monarch butterflies. There were literally thousands of butterflies, though unfortunately due to the time of day and the temperature they were mostly static - still is was an amazing sight and we spent a bit of time there.













The next stop on the trip south was Monterey. The main attraction there, as recommended to us was the aquarium. It was open later on a Friday night, so rather than trying to fight the weekend crush we spent the last two hours before closing exploring the aquarium, though we could have spent a lot more time watching all the different types of creatures.













All kinds of creatures...













We had read a lot about Carmel-by-the-Sea being a beautiful town, and after seeing it didn’t want to leave. There were heaps of little stores - clothing, antique jewellery, boutiques and galleries along the tree-lined cobbled streets. One interesting feature driving in was the 6 way stop. If you have been to Havelock North, it would be like driving up to the village roundabout, but two lanes each way, and stop signs. It took a bit to work out whether we could go or not, but we got there in the end. We will definitely be going back!

After hesitantly leaving Carmel, we drove for a while before finding an amazing spot for some lunch. A picnic again, but this time there were dolphins. We were watching a bunch of surfers catching waves, then saw what we first thought were sharks... but no, it was a pod of about 15 dolphins playing in the waves and around the surfers. They were a bit far away to get close up pictures of them, but we didn’t do too badly.













The next stop for the night was Santa Barbara.

San Francisco, California

San Francisco. Home to hippies, amazing food, the Golden Gate bridge and for a week, Hamish and Ruth.

We arrived in the afternoon, and before checking into the hotel, we walked along the waterfront and out onto a pier to look at the two bridges (Golden Gate bridge, above, and the Bay Bridge).  Once settled in, we explored Chinatown, which was just a block from our hotel. 

The following day, we got a little lost going up and down in the hills trying to reach the top of Coit Tower but we finally made it and enjoyed the views over the city! After that, we had to go back to the waterfront and do some more exploring - finding the left-hand store was just a bonus for Hamish! (That does say "Lefties rule" on the window)

While walking home we were treated to one of the funniest sights we've seen so far - a tour on Segways! 15 tourists in safety vests, touring San Fran on stand-up scooters. It turns out that it is impossible to look cool while riding one of those...

After all that walking, we needed to get some dinner, and a little research found us the perfect place, just around the corner. E & O Trading Company had a very Monsoon Poon feel, and the food was fantastic - especially the Indonesian corn fritters that they are known for. We enjoyed the food so much that we went back the next night (and had the same waiter...oh the shame).

San Francisco was gearing up for the Christmas break, and although we did have a little look around the shops, it was too filled with frenzied shoppers to be enjoyable! So we got a little culture instead, and went to the SF Museum of Modern Art.

The MOMA was having a neat exhibition of the latest purchases made by the new director - so instead of being organised by theme or time or artist, it was a few rooms of their rather random collection. There was a heavy focus on architecture and print images, although the iPod Touch was also on display! 

After enjoying Katherina Fritsh's work in Seattle, it was neat to see another one of her sculptures here. Kind mit Pudeln (Child with Poodles) is 224 poodle sculptures encircling the figure of a baby. 

In complete contrast to spending the day looking at art, we also visited the Jelly Belly jellybean factory, in Fairfield. A free tour + samples + cheap jellybeans = a day of fun! As the only people there without children, we did stand out a little, but who cares when you get to wear hats like these? (Sorry that Hamish's photo is out of focus - I was shaking with excitement!)

Our Christmas day was very low key, but we walked across the Golden Gate bridge and had planned on visiting the Jewish Contemporary Museum (open on Christmas day). It was too busy, so we gave up and  had champagne and ate our feast from Trader Joe's, the best supermarket in California. It was sunny, but windy, and the walk across the bridge was a little noisy, but we got to feel a little better about ourselves for drinking our champagne later! All in all, a very pleasant day!

Photo of the Day

Hummingbird at San Diego Zoo.  It took us about 10 minutes to find one that would stay still long enough to be photographed, we got 4 or 5 good shots.

Photo of the Day

So there was a bench, and we felt compelled to leap from it.  You can't blame us really.  It was a nice bench.  Made for leaping.

At Torrey Pines State Reserve

Photo of the Day

Neptune, God of the Sea.

Handle from a wine flask, Getty Villa, Malibu, California.

Mendocino to San Francisco, California

From Mendocino, we were looking to stick to the coast, but due to a lack of affordable accommodation we decided to head inland to Santa Rosa saving getting to San Francisco for another night.

We spent a bit of time on the way to Santa Rosa along the coast before cutting in to get to our destination.  Again the views out over the Pacific were incredible, both in the low areas...

...and the raised roads as well.

It was still a bit cold, so eating the sun helped.

We arrived in Santa Rosa late in the evening, with no knowledge of the city but found an ok place to stay.  We were planning to head to San Fran first thing in the morning, but on a tipoff we went to the Charles M Shulz Museum.  He was the creator of Peanuts (the Charlie Brown characters) and was from the local area.

There were exhibits about the locations, a huge area dedicated to Beethoven - including some of his hair!

There was a really cool mural made up of individual Peanuts strips, one of the only parts of the museum you could photograph.

After the museum we founds a farmer's market where we bought some organic bread to go with some organic salami and cheese which we bought while we were still up high on Highway 1 heading south.  We stopped at a town called Petaluma to have a picnic in a park.  It was a nice day out, with sun and little wind.

We then got back on the road to do the final drive to spend a week in San Fran.