Category: USA2014

Today was New Year’s Day in Santa Monica.

With Ellie & Grace starting to feel the onsert of a cold we took it easy.

It started with a wander around the Pier itself, watching some artists paint, eating churos, riding the ferris wheel, &
listening to some of the worst buskers EVA.

Santa Monica from Ferris Wheel: video

Afterwards,… yep… you guessed it… shopping (I even acquired a few things!).

Back to Hollywood at about 8 & grabbed a pizza to have at the hotel. It was a good, quiet, relaxing day.

We jumped in a cab fairly early and headed to Santa Monica for breakfast at a place called Jinky’s. A true breakfast (& lunch combined) of champions! Grace was told but clearly hadn’t leaned about the size of American meals:

Afterwards we boarded a “RastaBus” for an LA City tour.

These guys were much better than the tours we had in SF. They showed us much more of the city, more knowledgeable, & just great personalities.

Venice Beach (originally modeled on Venice Italy, now with only 1 canal remaining – a real shame):

Muscle Beach:

Rodeo Drive via Beverly Hills:

Pretty Woman’s Hotel: Beverly Wilshire:

We called in to World Market for lunch. Here we split again. One sight of TopShop & Grace was in a trance.

Afterwards, we moved up into the hills above LA to visit the Griffith Observatory.

On the way, the Grizwalds house:

Marty McFly’s hover-board tunnel:

Gracie playing a role in Charlie’s Angels:

Griffith Observatory 360 degree view: http://youtu.be/UgiRtxhEdlQ

Then back down to Hollywierd. He we left the tour as our hotel is in the area and it saved a trip to Santa Monica and back.

A great day.

This morning we flew to LA and were greeted with a very chilly and wet day… not what we were expecting.

Nonetheless, we had about half a day to introduce ourselves to Hollywood. First thing was to walk along line of the Hollywood “stars”. Ellie & Grace were beside themselves:

& Ellie wasn’t going to stop until she found “him”…

To balance this as much as I could, I did find someone more beautiful…

Given it was wet, we headed for Madame Tussauds for some indoor stardom. Some were average, but the majority were amazingly lifelike. Even Lady Gaga had a great looking arse (no photos)!

Then we had a whole load of fat followed by great burgers at Johnny Rockets. Ellie & Grace both wanted to try cheese fries – I’m not sure they’ll do it again. 😉 – 1,000,000 calories each. Rob: 0.

Having woken at 3am, I had exhausted all of the Facebook, motorcycle websites, & Breaking Bad episodes I could manage sitting in bed without breaking my back when I urged my traveling companions to extricate themselves from their cocoons at about 9:30.

We finally headed for the California Academy of Sciences at the Golden Gate Park. This facility houses an aquarium, planetarium, natural history museum, and four-story rainforest—all under one “living roof”.

The acquarium was quite impressive, but possibly at the expense of the other sciences covered.

The planetarium ran a mix of videos (Life on Earth, Mars Curiosity, & Dark Matter). The natural history exhibits included earthquakes, natural selection (Gallapagos & Madagascar), & plate tectonics.

The rainforest was also quite interesting… and popular – the queue was miles long!

I did enjoy it, but I did get the feeling it tried to cover too much breath for the size of the facility which resulted in a lack of detail in quite a few areas. A fun day though.

Ellie, Grace, & I planned to split at the Academy so they could head to the shopping (!) while I read every little placard and saw every exhibit. They were well-n-truly hitting the specials when I’d finished. Rather than take public transport I figured I’d leg it back to the hotel. 1 hour 45 mins and 5 km later I arrived – knackered, but having seen the non-touristy back-streets of San Francisco.

I then headed off to the shopping myself…. I needed a battery/charge pack for my phone – it just wouldn’t last very long with all of the photos I was taking.

Then we caught up for dinner. Afterwards we enjoyed a “Sea Salt Caramel Sundae” from Ghiradelli Chocolate (famous local chocolatier) – something recommended to Ellie by one of her work-mates.

Absolutely scrumptious, absolutely rich, absolutely sickening. I’ll definitely need to re-acquaint myself with the treadmill when I get home!

We finished the evening with the most touristy of tourist attractions by grabbing a cable-car back to the hotel.

Today (Sunday) was a day-trip down to Monterey via coach. It wasn’t the most successful, largely due to a late start from the tour company and it being possibly the busiest day at the Acquarium.

The bus (driven by a John Lee Hooker lookalike, who tried to sung Whitney Houston in the way home) took Highway 1 for most of the trip revealing some interesting coastline in California.

Enroute, we saw quite a few spouts from Grey Whale in the distance. They were migrating South for breeding season down in Mexico. Although hard to judge, the spouts were massive given their distance. You could see one every few minutes for the entire trip of 2.5 hours!

The Monterey Bay Acquarium is huge.

(Map)

First stop was the sea-otter exhibition (of course!). This was a tank covered by 3 levels, so even with the crowd you could still get a good view.

Jellies – the lighting in the tanks was particularly clever…

… a very good acquarium with lots to see for all ages.

We then headed further south and took the 17-Mile Drive: a private stretch off road that winds its way past more coastline, redwood forests, ridiculously expensive housing ($10s of millions, & exclusive golf clubs – including Pebble Beach.

Traffic along this single lane was like a car park… making it great for photos, but a late return to SF.

Carmel was the next stop where we just wandered through the very pretty but expensive main street (clearly targeting those that could afford to play at Pebble Beach).

That represented the end of the tour except for the very long & slow ride home in heavy traffic, finally getting back to town at about 9pm.

So, a quick walk down to the Pier again for a quick meal before bed.

Sleep-in tomorrow.

I now have to bite very carefully. My crown has been playing up badly leaving me too chew on the left side only. So bad that I scan the menu for soft and squishy stuff to eat.

Every now & then I get this excruciating pain in my upper right jaw that quickly dispels any appetite I may have had. I have found this great medication though… a paste you rub on to the affected area and it turns it rather numb in a matter of minutes. I think it might be useful for other procedures: major surgery being one of them.

I’m not sure I can get it in Oz.

On the first night here in SF we all got pre-paid SIMs for our phones – mainly so we had access to maps and Google in the street.

We had trouble finding them at first as everyone was “sold out”.

Eventually, we came across T-Mobile who helped us out. Unfortunately, the Galaxy S3 (international) that I have uses frequencies they don’t support. So, I have access, but at decade-old speeds. 🙁

Ellie & Grace think it’s quite amusing. Win for Apple there.

Gracie digging in to a Banana & Nutella crepe at Pier 39 after dinner…. elegant?  Not.

The tour bus dropped us off at Nob Hill where we walled down some of the extremely steep streets in SF… glad it was down and not up (I’ll grab photos in daylight next time).

This purpose was to allow the girls to attack the shops again. My bad.

Since it was a major holiday weekend, it was crazy busy. We couldn’t get a sit-down meal without a long wait, so after I waited for hours while girls visited every shop in SF, we headed back to Pier 39 & grabbed a bite at The Hard Rock Cafe.

We agreed that from now on we should follow the day’s touring with an evening meal & then separate: I can go and look at all of the really interesting stuff like science, technology, & motorcycles; the girls can go and try on every pair of shoes they like.

Rounding or the tour for the day, we ended up at Twin Peaks which gave us a lovely dusk city-scape: