America F$ck yeah Part II
Day 75 (cont’d)
A reasonably pleasant flight
across the country and landed in Los Angeles without hiccup. It was too good to
be true, and our cab drive quickly introduced what would be an ongoing trend,
cabs in L.A. are rubbish! But after the most confusing conversations of our
trip (and they were in English!) we managed to find our apartment. Great place,
trippy art work… you be the judge…
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| Crazy weed art work... |
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| Home sweet home in LA! West Hollywood, the safest suburb in LA |
First night in LA was a
rendezvous with Jaide and Rowan on their last night of holidays! We had drinks,
awesome Indian, and some more drinks back at their hotel bar (at the Crowne
Plaza) which would also show us another on-going trend, full of Aussies!
Day 76
Not really having any concrete
plans for our time in L.A. we spent the
next day out at Santa Monica Beach just chilling. The weather had really turned it on
for us, blue skies, sunshine and a 0% humidity 28 degC was just amazing!
Unfortunately the water was freezing so even though we packed the swimmers we
didn’t manage to get in the water.
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| The pier at Santa Monica |
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| Some people stand in the darkness... afraid to step into the light *slow motion* |
Afternoon shopping with the
beautiful people, and the crazy people around Santa Monica. Dinner was also in
the shopping mall at Santa Monica at Cabo Mexican. A chain restaurant but
awesomely cheap 2for1 margaritas and good cheap Mexican! Unfortunately the
whole concept of tipping regardless of quality really annoys me. The service
was bad, but I was still obliged to tip the waitress, as some one who tips when
appropriate anyway it’s a bit rich. She did look like Penny from The Big Bang
Theory so I suppose it wasn’t a total waste! Anyway our economy is gold so I
shouldn’t complain!
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| Arty sunset at Santa Monica |
Day 77
On the advice of Jaide and Rowan
we signed up for a combined Star’s houses/Universal Studio tour. Whilst whether
or not the stars actually live in the houses they allegedly own, it is worth it
just to see some of the awesome cribs that are in the Hollywood hills! Amazing!
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| Some nice home in the Hollywood Hills |
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| Tony Stark's house from Ironman... not actually on the beach... |
The tour drops you back at
Universal for the afternoon and we had a ball. Highlights were the Simpsons 4D
ride (even though I discovered 4D rides make me motion sick, roller coasters
not so much, weird!), the famous back lot tour and the Jurassic park ride!
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| Obvious... |
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| The happiest place on earth! |
The back lot tour is really
interesting, with Universal being one of the few studios still with a large
back lot and hence lots of things have and are shot there. It’s interesting to
see the places from so many movies and tv shows pointed out to you. A recent
fire which destroyed the original ‘town square’ means that the façade that was
a part of my child hood in the Back to the Future franchise is now the more
modern town square from the Ghost Whisper. I spose Jennifer Love Hewit is
better looking than Doc Brown, but still…
After a massive day it was dinner
at the local at the end of our street which was delicious!
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| Redhead beach? no the Jaws set! |
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| Wysteria lane (desperate house wives) complete with fake Bentley |
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| Me and the guys from Apollo 13 |
Day 78
The world sporting tour continued
and it was off to a Lakers game at the Staples Centre against the Golden State
Warriors. Despite a rocky start where they informed us that we couldn’t bring
our larger DSLR lens into the game, we had to check it in, our seats were
brilliant and the Lakers won comfortably in the end. Katrina even got to do
some star spotting with Jack Nickelson, Charlize Theron and the cleaner from
scrubs, all in attendance! The NBA is really a spectacle with the players, the
stars, the crowd, the introductions and the hottest cheerleaders seen to date!
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| Live from the Staples Centre!!! Tourists! |
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| The hottest cheerleaders of the world tour, thank you Laker girls! |
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| Kobe, being Kobe |
Day 79
Our last day in L.A. started by
us picking up our car for our future road trip and spent the day shopping on
Rodeo Drive and generally just cruising around L.A. Katrina did pick up a very
nice pair of PRADA glasses on Rodeo drive. A trip to the Nike store was also on
the cards as well, Nike (and addidas for that matter) gear is ridiculously
cheap!
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| Rodeo Drive, complete with Prada bag! |
On the recommendation of Lee and
Sheree our last night was spent enjoying Mr Chow’s famous Chinese in Hollywood.
It was awesome. The service was great and worth the tip!
Day 80
It was Vegas Baby! We had to
detour past the general LAX area to check our bags into a storage place (if you
ever at LAX, note there is no luggage check at the airport itself, apparently
common in post 9/11 US airports). We had decided to drive out to Vegas, but to
be honest, it’s pretty boring, long straight roads through sparsely vegetated kind
of dessert like countryside on the otherhand cheaper than the flights!
We arrived at the Palazzo not
knowing what to expect, and when I checked in late (after Katrina) and the
receptionist said I’d be in ‘suite’ whatever, I thought, come on mate, it’s
just a room. No actually I was wrong, it was a suite! 3 tvs! A little lounge
room, a bedroom and a massive bathroom! Electronic blinds, automatically
charging mini bar, gold!
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| Our Suite at the Pallazo |
Our first night in Vegas was
spent celebrating Troy and Peta’s engagement with them and Mitch and Elle. We
ate, we drank, we gambled! Katrina and I had the most amazing, and expensive,
steak known to man, rib eye on the bone, cooked to perfection. We partied, at
the end of the day that’s what Vegas is for…
Day 81
Day 2 in Vegas was more of the
same, Katrina spent the day ‘resting’ (read: being hung over) in bed while I
had brunch with newly engaged couple. The night time was consumed by another
fine meal at the Palazzo, a cirque du Soleil performance of ‘Love’ to the music
of the Beatles a quick walk up to the Bellagio fountain and through some of the
other Casinos for comparison. Then we ventured back to the Palazzo for more
gambling…..
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| The Paris, from the Bellagio Fountains |
One by one I lost everyone else,
first Katrina, then Mitch, and before I knew it I’d won, and subsequently lost
about $700, over tipped the waitress frequently and as a consequence ended up
heavily intoxicated. By this time of morning, about 8am, trying to sleep would
be foolish…
Day 82
Returning to the room Katrina
informed me she wasn’t getting up for another half an hour so I laid down
clothed, and passed out for half an hour. What was to follow was the toughest
leg of our journey. A flight to San Fran which I slept through, a killer hang
over building throughout the day!
Katrina saved me from the inconvenience
of being hung over on public transport and decided to hire a car to get us
around SF for 2 days. The afternoon was spent trying to find a Maccas, read
earlier statement about hang over, but instead ending up down at the ferry
terminal and having an awesome GOTS burger! Nearly an instant hang over cure!
Off to Oakland to meet up with
Danielle, we beat her home from work so hung out in down town Oakland before
crashing at her place. She took us out for a lovely dinner at a local Italian
place in an up and coming neighbourhood (read: use to be dodge). She also
helped us plan a pretty compressed site seeing tour of SF for the 1 day we had!
Day 83
Knowing we only had one day to
enjoy the best of San Fran, it started early with an awesome Segway tour of the
harbour area. Having seen Segway tours throughout our journey, and deciding
they were lame, we took Danielle’s advice and actual did one! It was totally
freaking awesome! We had a perfect day which helped, but they are great fun,
easy to master, and our tour guide was quite good!
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| Segways with Alcatraz in the back ground! |
Segway tour down it was lunch at the Pier at the Fisherman’s Warf before heading down to the Alcatraz tour. The
afternoon was spent out at Alcatraz exploring the island and the old cell
block. The audio tour of the cell block is quite good and has some interesting
little tid bits of information. As we
were leaving the boat arrived with caterers etc for some kind of launch party
for the new TV series of Alcatraz, no stars were spotted.
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| I tried to shut the door... just kidding... |
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| Art at Alcatraz... |
Having one last SF highlight to
tick off the list it was a trolley ride up to Union Square. What I didn’t
realise is that SF has trams but also the famous trolleys, which are actually
pulled by an underground cable, they are a bit of a rough ride, but look cool
and old and serve their tourist purpose well!
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| Trolley rides bitches! |
The evening was spent, you
guessed it, Shopping! Levi Strauss was from SF and hence the Levi store here is
4 storeys high. Additionally there was a radical sale on and we walked out with
4 pairs of Levi’s for $89! Amazing. Apparently he was a tent maker and when the
gold rush took off in 1849 (hence the SF 49ers!) the miners were complaining
that their clothes tore too easily. So Levi decided to make them out of the
same material he made tents out of, hence the rivet like studs that are still
found on jeans today! (thanks Segway tour guide!).
Danielle met us in the CBD and we
went out to another amazing restaurant in the ‘hipster’ part of town. The food
was amazing, and the company even better!
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| Dinner with D! |
Day 84
Danielle sent us off with
breakfast and some directions to get us back to the airport via the Golden Gate
bridge. So a quick stop off at Golden Gate Park a photo shoot and back to the
airport.
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| Doesn't need caption... |
We had a few hours to kill in
L.A. so it was out to Venice Beach home of one of our favourite fictional
characters, Hank Moody (Californication), to get our Chakra aligned and have a
spa treatment.
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| The twilight of our journey... |
This was it! The day we’d been
dreading for 12 weeks, time to go home. Having travelled approximately 52,458
kilometres, 84 days, a long forgotten budget, approximately 45 kg mailed home,
another 25kg in extra luggage coming
home and the best experience of our lives to date it was finally over.
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| The trip! |
It may have taken me 3 weeks
since we got back, but that’s it for the blog. I have an idea brewing of the
inaugural Bennett travel awards, for outstanding achievement, in the field of
excellence, however we’ll see how next week is at work. Thanks to everyone who
has read, dismissed, ignored, encouraged, discouraged this blog along the way.
Despite being time consuming it has been a labour of love, I think the first
and the last 3 posts being the most enjoyable due to initial excitement and
then these 3 being able to relive after it was all over…
All our Love
M&K
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