By the time I finish writing this, all of the pictures so far should be uploaded to my Flickr account. We had to get out of our hostel at 10am today and our bus isn't until 6 so we have had to kill a few hours. We found an internet cafe that has gaming facilities so the connection is really good.
That's all for now.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Rain and the Irish
How many Irish pubs must a traveller walk in to before he meets someone who knows Niall?
The answer is quite a few. So we have been in New Zealand for a few days and we have basically spent our time in Irish pubs and getting wet. It has rained every day that we have been here so we have ducked into pubs when we can and they have all been Irish themed. I suppose it would be better if we actually liked Guiness but they are definitely a huge step up over the bars in America.
Although we have been stuck inside alot, we have managed to go up the Sky Tower in Auckland, go to the Auckland museum and go to the Zoo. We were allowed to go into the back of the Red Panda enclosure and feed them because it was too rainy for them to come out. We also fed a giraffe. It gave Jordan a huge lick on the hand... it obviously prefers a shorter lady (Jordan's joke).
We made it into Hamilton yesterday and we've just been hanging round as it's been so wet. We've bought some big jumpers for the time we have left in NZ as it's so cold. We look a bit silly but at least we are warm. The hostel we are staying in is really nice. There was a whole netball team staying last night so we were put into the owners house in a really nice room with a bed so much more comfortable then the ones we have been staying in.
I'm fast running out of time on the net so I'll finish here. I'm trying to upload a few pictures to flickr but it's going really slow (again). I don't think I'll even get to the Alcatraz ones...
The answer is quite a few. So we have been in New Zealand for a few days and we have basically spent our time in Irish pubs and getting wet. It has rained every day that we have been here so we have ducked into pubs when we can and they have all been Irish themed. I suppose it would be better if we actually liked Guiness but they are definitely a huge step up over the bars in America.
Although we have been stuck inside alot, we have managed to go up the Sky Tower in Auckland, go to the Auckland museum and go to the Zoo. We were allowed to go into the back of the Red Panda enclosure and feed them because it was too rainy for them to come out. We also fed a giraffe. It gave Jordan a huge lick on the hand... it obviously prefers a shorter lady (Jordan's joke).
We made it into Hamilton yesterday and we've just been hanging round as it's been so wet. We've bought some big jumpers for the time we have left in NZ as it's so cold. We look a bit silly but at least we are warm. The hostel we are staying in is really nice. There was a whole netball team staying last night so we were put into the owners house in a really nice room with a bed so much more comfortable then the ones we have been staying in.
I'm fast running out of time on the net so I'll finish here. I'm trying to upload a few pictures to flickr but it's going really slow (again). I don't think I'll even get to the Alcatraz ones...
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
America
I seemed to have lost Tuesday. It's quite a strange feeling but my week so far has consisted of a Monday and the first of Wednesday... Tuesday hasn't happened for me. It's a strange feeling.
We have arrived safely in New Zealand. We have booked into our hostel which seems pretty decent. The owner is friendly and was happy to chat about the city for a while... it turns out he has visited Milton Keynes before which I thought was funny if slightly odd.
As not much has happened here, I thought it would be a good opportunity to write about our last few days in America and our overall thoughts on the place. We spent our last night in the Venice beach area. The hostel was alright although we were in a 3 bed dorm so we had to share with one other person. It worked out okay but we felt a bit nerdy when we were in bed by eleven and we was off out drinking some more. Our excuse was that we had to check out in the morning and we had already had a fairly heavy night the night before at a bar called the Powerhouse in Hollywood. That was quite a fun night. We ended up talking to a rocker couple called Vic and Brook (how American can you get?) and drinking 3$ pints.
Venice beach was a really fun place during the day. It was very hot so we sat by the beach and I got in a few times. There was a real festival atmosphere with stalls selling all kinds of things and street performers along the promenade. We had some dinner in the evening and had a walk up the beach as the sun set. After popping back the hostel, we decided to run out to get some bottled water - our room was ridiculously hot. The place was a little scarier at night. There were gangs of people hanging out everywhere and the lively atmosphere of the day was long gone. We promptly bought water and retired to bed!
We spent our last day in L.A. just lounging on the beach and having a long lunch in an Italian restaurant just off the sea front.
It has been a strange but fun couple of weeks. Although it may have seemed like we have been moaning about a lot on this blog, we have had some really fun times and after some initial feelings of disappointment when in L.A. we have decided that we would definitely come back. I think L.A. is maybe hyped up a bit too much. Hollywood is touristy and a bit rough and Sunset Strip consists of very few bars that are really far away from each other.
San Francisco, on the other hand, was a great place. You can be a tourist and do all the touristy things or you can just hang out in bars and soak up the atmosphere. There are a lot more places to just sit in SF than L.A.
I really should sleep now as I didn't sleep on the plane (how do people do it?) but I am wide awake. I think I'm currently on about 26 hours but I could be screwing my maths with all the odd time zone business. We have much better access to the net here so I will hopefully update this blog a little more over the next few days. I may even chance hogging all the bandwidth and upload a few pictures to Flickr.
We have arrived safely in New Zealand. We have booked into our hostel which seems pretty decent. The owner is friendly and was happy to chat about the city for a while... it turns out he has visited Milton Keynes before which I thought was funny if slightly odd.
As not much has happened here, I thought it would be a good opportunity to write about our last few days in America and our overall thoughts on the place. We spent our last night in the Venice beach area. The hostel was alright although we were in a 3 bed dorm so we had to share with one other person. It worked out okay but we felt a bit nerdy when we were in bed by eleven and we was off out drinking some more. Our excuse was that we had to check out in the morning and we had already had a fairly heavy night the night before at a bar called the Powerhouse in Hollywood. That was quite a fun night. We ended up talking to a rocker couple called Vic and Brook (how American can you get?) and drinking 3$ pints.
Venice beach was a really fun place during the day. It was very hot so we sat by the beach and I got in a few times. There was a real festival atmosphere with stalls selling all kinds of things and street performers along the promenade. We had some dinner in the evening and had a walk up the beach as the sun set. After popping back the hostel, we decided to run out to get some bottled water - our room was ridiculously hot. The place was a little scarier at night. There were gangs of people hanging out everywhere and the lively atmosphere of the day was long gone. We promptly bought water and retired to bed!
We spent our last day in L.A. just lounging on the beach and having a long lunch in an Italian restaurant just off the sea front.
It has been a strange but fun couple of weeks. Although it may have seemed like we have been moaning about a lot on this blog, we have had some really fun times and after some initial feelings of disappointment when in L.A. we have decided that we would definitely come back. I think L.A. is maybe hyped up a bit too much. Hollywood is touristy and a bit rough and Sunset Strip consists of very few bars that are really far away from each other.
San Francisco, on the other hand, was a great place. You can be a tourist and do all the touristy things or you can just hang out in bars and soak up the atmosphere. There are a lot more places to just sit in SF than L.A.
I really should sleep now as I didn't sleep on the plane (how do people do it?) but I am wide awake. I think I'm currently on about 26 hours but I could be screwing my maths with all the odd time zone business. We have much better access to the net here so I will hopefully update this blog a little more over the next few days. I may even chance hogging all the bandwidth and upload a few pictures to Flickr.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Greyhound
We are currently back in L.A. after spending a very fun 6 days in San Francisco. We have agreed that San Francisco is far superior to Los Angeles for many reasons but I will get into that another time. This post is all about Greyhound buses.
So we decided to get the Greyhound from L.A. to San Francisco as we thought flying would be too expensive and our original plan of getting the Megabus fell through after it sold out months in advance. So we booked Greyhound without doing enough research... don't worry... we paid for that little slip up.
Our journey to SF was fairly uneventful... apart from the fact it took 9 hours and was an hour late in leaving Simon, our friend we were staying with, waiting at the less than safe Greyhound station. Whilst waiting he did witness someone getting their bag stolen so you get a good idea about the kind of people that hang around these stations. The L.A. one is situated in the beautiful surroundings of Skid Row where homeless insane wonder aimlessly... nice.
But it was on our return journey that the fun really started. We made our meal stop at 12:30 (which only gives you the option of eating at Burger King by the way) and things were going well. We were making good time. It got to 1:10 when were supposed to be leaving and the driver wasn't getting up from his table leaving many of the passengers a little annoyed. After about 15 minutes, he lets us know that the bumper is hanging off and we will not be able to proceed for an hour. This was quite annoying. After waiting for the mechanic to turn up and fix the bumper we set off. Now the air conditioning was not working and the bus was spluttering along even stalling a few times on the way out of the car park. This was quite worrying. We all got out and waited for the engine to cool down so we could get on our way. We did this and set off on the freeway.
We made it about a mile down the road before pulling into a truck stop. Here we sat for over two hours while we waited for a replacement bus. No shelter except for some trees, lots of flies and some not very desirable toilets were our landscape for these few hours. After the replacement bus was delayed yet again (the driver first said that it would be there at in an hour... then it was 5:30, then 7:30) the driver said we were going to get back on the bus with the top hatches open and we would deal with the heat - everyone was pleased although annoyed at the fact that we didn't do this two hours ago. We were back on the road... but for how long?
Not long is the answer to that. About an hour down the road we ground to a halt on the side of the freeway. In the arse end of nowhere if you pardon the expression - about 100 miles outside of L.A. and 30 miles away from the nearest town. Here we stayed for three and a half hours while we waited for another bus. In the desert heat with very little water and no food we stood for this time. The sun slowly set and we were in darkness although at least we were slightly less sweaty. At 11:00 the replacement bus showed up. We arrived in L.A. at 2:00AM (luckily we forced the driver to let us off at Hollywood rather than our planned stop of the Skid row one) and we booked into our motel at 2:30.
The thing that worried us most while we were stuck was the fact that we had no way of contacting our motel to say that we would be late. We didn't have the number and for the majority of the time our phones didn't work. Eventually we decided to phone our friend David in the UK (at 3AM UK time) and asked him to look up the number so we could let them know. It all worked out fine in the end and we got our room.
So today we are going to the Hollywood Greyhound office to lodge a complaint and demand a refund.
I am currently uploading some pictures from SF to Flickr but it is taking forever on this internet cafe connection. I may have to try again tomorrow to finish the set including the pictures from Alcatraz.
So we decided to get the Greyhound from L.A. to San Francisco as we thought flying would be too expensive and our original plan of getting the Megabus fell through after it sold out months in advance. So we booked Greyhound without doing enough research... don't worry... we paid for that little slip up.
Our journey to SF was fairly uneventful... apart from the fact it took 9 hours and was an hour late in leaving Simon, our friend we were staying with, waiting at the less than safe Greyhound station. Whilst waiting he did witness someone getting their bag stolen so you get a good idea about the kind of people that hang around these stations. The L.A. one is situated in the beautiful surroundings of Skid Row where homeless insane wonder aimlessly... nice.
But it was on our return journey that the fun really started. We made our meal stop at 12:30 (which only gives you the option of eating at Burger King by the way) and things were going well. We were making good time. It got to 1:10 when were supposed to be leaving and the driver wasn't getting up from his table leaving many of the passengers a little annoyed. After about 15 minutes, he lets us know that the bumper is hanging off and we will not be able to proceed for an hour. This was quite annoying. After waiting for the mechanic to turn up and fix the bumper we set off. Now the air conditioning was not working and the bus was spluttering along even stalling a few times on the way out of the car park. This was quite worrying. We all got out and waited for the engine to cool down so we could get on our way. We did this and set off on the freeway.
We made it about a mile down the road before pulling into a truck stop. Here we sat for over two hours while we waited for a replacement bus. No shelter except for some trees, lots of flies and some not very desirable toilets were our landscape for these few hours. After the replacement bus was delayed yet again (the driver first said that it would be there at in an hour... then it was 5:30, then 7:30) the driver said we were going to get back on the bus with the top hatches open and we would deal with the heat - everyone was pleased although annoyed at the fact that we didn't do this two hours ago. We were back on the road... but for how long?
Not long is the answer to that. About an hour down the road we ground to a halt on the side of the freeway. In the arse end of nowhere if you pardon the expression - about 100 miles outside of L.A. and 30 miles away from the nearest town. Here we stayed for three and a half hours while we waited for another bus. In the desert heat with very little water and no food we stood for this time. The sun slowly set and we were in darkness although at least we were slightly less sweaty. At 11:00 the replacement bus showed up. We arrived in L.A. at 2:00AM (luckily we forced the driver to let us off at Hollywood rather than our planned stop of the Skid row one) and we booked into our motel at 2:30.
The thing that worried us most while we were stuck was the fact that we had no way of contacting our motel to say that we would be late. We didn't have the number and for the majority of the time our phones didn't work. Eventually we decided to phone our friend David in the UK (at 3AM UK time) and asked him to look up the number so we could let them know. It all worked out fine in the end and we got our room.
So today we are going to the Hollywood Greyhound office to lodge a complaint and demand a refund.
I am currently uploading some pictures from SF to Flickr but it is taking forever on this internet cafe connection. I may have to try again tomorrow to finish the set including the pictures from Alcatraz.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Wind
Mark Twain once said 'the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco'. This I can personally vouch for. Out of the four days that we have spent in this city, only two have been what we would consider hot. Even on the warm days there have been moments of chilly wind.
We arrived quite late in the evening on Friday after a nine hour bus journey through the desert of California. We were met at the bus station by Simon, our friend who lives in San Fran, and dropped our stuff off at this loft apartment. We headed off to meet some of Simon's work mates who had stayed drinking at work. This is one of those moments that you really wished who worked for a silicon valley tech company. We walked in on a few people sitting on huge sofas in the middle of the office drinking what can only be described as the largest bottle of Barcadi you have ever seen. We sat drinking there before heading back to eat pizza at the flat.
The next day we went out to a street festival with two of Simon's friends that are visiting from Amsterdam, Jos and Vicky, and ended up holing up in Francis Ford Coppola's restaurant (yes, he owns it). We spent a few hours drinking and ,unbeknownst to me, getting very burnt. I noticed once we got home that I had a bright red forehead and nose. Luckily I didn't get any pealing as I covered myself in aftersun about ten times per day.
On Sunday we decided it would be fun to have a picnic in the park. We got on the Muni and headed over to Golden Gate Park with cheese, olives, bread and things to eat with wine. This ended up being a huge mistake as the temperature dropped dramatically and we ended up shivering through our little picnic. We decided to head over to a bar to heat up and ended up spending about 4 hours there.
Monday was fairly uneventful but today we walked over and booked our tickets to Alcatraz before walking up to Golden Gate Bridge. We got fairly close before decided it was time to start walking home. Now we are having a long relax and considering watching something shitty on the home cinema.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
San Francisco
Apologies for the lack of posting over the last couple of days. Although we have found a fairly nice internet cafe near to our motel in L.A., we have generally just been checking e-mails and looking up bus routes as it's 1.75$ for 15 minutes.
Anyway, the last few days have been quite eventful. We are currently in San Francisco staying with a friend in the centre of town. After posting this, we are going to go for a little explore.
But back to L.A. After the last post, we went out and found the Hollywood sign. We caught the subway a few stops down Hollywood Boulevard walked back. This took us about 2 hours as anyone who's been to LA will tell you, the streets are quite long. We realised this again the next day when we caught the bus over to Beverly Hills. It took us quite a while but soon we were wondering around all the ridiculously expensive shops on Rodeo Drive. We stopped for lunch (I had a chilli dog and Jordan a salad and fries) before heading over to Santa Monica. There we sat in a beach bar and had a pint... well as close to a pint as you can get - about 600ml. We then wondered around the pier and tried to get in the sea but it was a little bit too cold. Jordan got annoyed because she was then covered in sand as the sun cream we have been using is practically just grease. Due to our sandy state, we decided to do the long bus ride back to the motel to have a shower.
That night we decided to go out for dinner and walked down Hollywood Blvd looking for a restaurant. We passed some decent looking Italian places but were taken in by a swanky looking bar/restaurant that seemed to have some reasonably priced food. We decided to go in and were seated and brought menus. The waitor explained that it was a tapas style affair so the prices became a little less attractive. We then looked at the wine which was around the 50$ mark. At that point we were quite worried that we may have wondered accidentally into a really expensive restaurant. We ordered a couple of dishes each and a bottle of Chablis and worked out that we would probably end up spending about 80$ which isn't too bad but was a little more than we planned on spending. The waitor brought us out our food which consisted of some rather overdone flame grilled asparagus, mashed potato with truffle oil, miso soup and the largest mountain of calamari you've ever seen. After eating a bit of these we decided that there may be a reason that the place was empty apart from ourselves and another table. We picked at our food for a while before decided that we should just pay up, finish our wine and go. We paid the bill and sat in a more comfortable area drinking the rest of our wine. It was at this moment that we had a great idea. As the food had been so bad, we would not tip. The problem was that we had already put a tip in bill. We chose our moment carefully and quickly emptied the tip into Jordan's bag before making a hasty getaway. The tip money went to good use on beer and crisps to fill our empty bellies.
I'll leave the next day for another post as we really should go out exploring. I am currently uploading some pictures to Flickr so you can have a look at those while you wait with baited breath for the next post.
Anyway, the last few days have been quite eventful. We are currently in San Francisco staying with a friend in the centre of town. After posting this, we are going to go for a little explore.
But back to L.A. After the last post, we went out and found the Hollywood sign. We caught the subway a few stops down Hollywood Boulevard walked back. This took us about 2 hours as anyone who's been to LA will tell you, the streets are quite long. We realised this again the next day when we caught the bus over to Beverly Hills. It took us quite a while but soon we were wondering around all the ridiculously expensive shops on Rodeo Drive. We stopped for lunch (I had a chilli dog and Jordan a salad and fries) before heading over to Santa Monica. There we sat in a beach bar and had a pint... well as close to a pint as you can get - about 600ml. We then wondered around the pier and tried to get in the sea but it was a little bit too cold. Jordan got annoyed because she was then covered in sand as the sun cream we have been using is practically just grease. Due to our sandy state, we decided to do the long bus ride back to the motel to have a shower.
That night we decided to go out for dinner and walked down Hollywood Blvd looking for a restaurant. We passed some decent looking Italian places but were taken in by a swanky looking bar/restaurant that seemed to have some reasonably priced food. We decided to go in and were seated and brought menus. The waitor explained that it was a tapas style affair so the prices became a little less attractive. We then looked at the wine which was around the 50$ mark. At that point we were quite worried that we may have wondered accidentally into a really expensive restaurant. We ordered a couple of dishes each and a bottle of Chablis and worked out that we would probably end up spending about 80$ which isn't too bad but was a little more than we planned on spending. The waitor brought us out our food which consisted of some rather overdone flame grilled asparagus, mashed potato with truffle oil, miso soup and the largest mountain of calamari you've ever seen. After eating a bit of these we decided that there may be a reason that the place was empty apart from ourselves and another table. We picked at our food for a while before decided that we should just pay up, finish our wine and go. We paid the bill and sat in a more comfortable area drinking the rest of our wine. It was at this moment that we had a great idea. As the food had been so bad, we would not tip. The problem was that we had already put a tip in bill. We chose our moment carefully and quickly emptied the tip into Jordan's bag before making a hasty getaway. The tip money went to good use on beer and crisps to fill our empty bellies.
I'll leave the next day for another post as we really should go out exploring. I am currently uploading some pictures to Flickr so you can have a look at those while you wait with baited breath for the next post.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Hostel - Part III
Greetings from Hollywood!
We landed safely last night at 7pm local time... 3am in real time. We got driven to the hostel in a mad shuttle bus with a driver who put on his glasses to read his text messages (whilst driving along) but took them off to drive! We arrived in Hollywood at about 9:30 (5:30 UK time) and walked into the grotiest little place on earth. The guy behind reception was wearing a vest and we could smell him across the desk. They had no record of our booking and seemed very hard done by that we were asking for a room. So after paying almost double what we were told (as we didn't have a reservation) we walked into our dorm room.
Oh dear.
There were no blankets, dirty leopard print sheets and some crazy european boys. Jordan was clearly a little distressed at this point so we had a better look around. Our horror at the room was only compounded when we saw the bathrooms. Communal showers and minimal doors on the toilet cubicals didn't help the overall vibe of the place.
So we went for a walk.
After looking for a shop to buy some water we decided to look for better accommodation. We found a rather scary looking motel which didn't have anyone in the office so we carried on looking. It was then that we found our saviour. The 7 Star Hollywood Motel (I doubt it really has 7 stars). After inquiring about room rates and availability we made our decision. We would stay in the dirty Hollywood Hostel for one night and leave promptly in the morning. And this we did.
Now most of you will not believe this but we were up and getting ready at 6 o clock in the morning... no, really. We went out for breakfast at the International House of Pancakes and ate a very small amount of the huge portions given to us (photos coming soon). We went over to our motel and checked in before heading back to pick up our back packs from the hostel. After chucking our bags into our motel room and having some nice long showers we found ourselves in much better spirits and prepared for the day of exploring ahead.
We are now going to see if we can see the Hollywood sign through all of the smog and cloud.
Quote of the holiday so far - 'Is this the Walk of Fame? It's a bit shit isn't it?!' - Jordan.
We landed safely last night at 7pm local time... 3am in real time. We got driven to the hostel in a mad shuttle bus with a driver who put on his glasses to read his text messages (whilst driving along) but took them off to drive! We arrived in Hollywood at about 9:30 (5:30 UK time) and walked into the grotiest little place on earth. The guy behind reception was wearing a vest and we could smell him across the desk. They had no record of our booking and seemed very hard done by that we were asking for a room. So after paying almost double what we were told (as we didn't have a reservation) we walked into our dorm room.
Oh dear.
There were no blankets, dirty leopard print sheets and some crazy european boys. Jordan was clearly a little distressed at this point so we had a better look around. Our horror at the room was only compounded when we saw the bathrooms. Communal showers and minimal doors on the toilet cubicals didn't help the overall vibe of the place.
So we went for a walk.
After looking for a shop to buy some water we decided to look for better accommodation. We found a rather scary looking motel which didn't have anyone in the office so we carried on looking. It was then that we found our saviour. The 7 Star Hollywood Motel (I doubt it really has 7 stars). After inquiring about room rates and availability we made our decision. We would stay in the dirty Hollywood Hostel for one night and leave promptly in the morning. And this we did.
Now most of you will not believe this but we were up and getting ready at 6 o clock in the morning... no, really. We went out for breakfast at the International House of Pancakes and ate a very small amount of the huge portions given to us (photos coming soon). We went over to our motel and checked in before heading back to pick up our back packs from the hostel. After chucking our bags into our motel room and having some nice long showers we found ourselves in much better spirits and prepared for the day of exploring ahead.
We are now going to see if we can see the Hollywood sign through all of the smog and cloud.
Quote of the holiday so far - 'Is this the Walk of Fame? It's a bit shit isn't it?!' - Jordan.
Friday, June 6, 2008
T minus 3 days
I'm a bit scared.
My girlfriend and I start our two month holiday on Monday when we fly out to Los Angeles. Whilst I am very excited and this really is a trip of a life time, it's really bloody scary.
I've traveled on my own before. I managed to get to a festival in Germany with no grasp of German whatsoever but at least I was only a few hundred miles away. This time I will be half way across the planet.
I think we are pretty prepared. I'm currently printing off a few copies of all of our e-tickets. In fact, the e-tickets are probably not helping the situation. It used to be that if you were booking something you would have a ticket in your hand, or at least a letter telling you that you had booked your hotel. We have a few automated e-mails telling us that everything is A-OK.
That's all I wanted to say at the moment but be prepared for several more posts describing my apprehension over the next three days.
My girlfriend and I start our two month holiday on Monday when we fly out to Los Angeles. Whilst I am very excited and this really is a trip of a life time, it's really bloody scary.
I've traveled on my own before. I managed to get to a festival in Germany with no grasp of German whatsoever but at least I was only a few hundred miles away. This time I will be half way across the planet.
I think we are pretty prepared. I'm currently printing off a few copies of all of our e-tickets. In fact, the e-tickets are probably not helping the situation. It used to be that if you were booking something you would have a ticket in your hand, or at least a letter telling you that you had booked your hotel. We have a few automated e-mails telling us that everything is A-OK.
That's all I wanted to say at the moment but be prepared for several more posts describing my apprehension over the next three days.
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