Hi Friends and Family, As promised - the long awaited extra blog about the sunset. It was such a delicious sight and absolutely amazing. We had been advised about the best points to be on in order to get the advantage and we weren't the only ones! Cars were zooming and screeching all over the "highway" and the whole international community seemd to be converging at the same place. At the same time! We were all so excited and there was a lot of scrambling and leaping and jumping over small "rocks" in order to get to just the right position as the sunset took place for only about 15 minutes before a blanket of darkness would descend all over the Canyon. The sunlight was blazing and twinkling all at the same time! What a view ... read more

Hi Friends and Family, THE GRAND CANYON I We arrived at our hotel – „The Grand Canyon Plaza Resort“ in the evening and after checking-in, went straight for the dinning room ‘cos we were very, very hungry! We were really looking forward to experiencing everything that The Grand Canyon had to offer. The hotel was really nice and we had a deluxe room which backed out near to the indoor spa area and had two vanity areas, a huge flat screen TV, a terrace backing into the wintergarten and free WIFI! It would be so lovely in the summer. You could see that it really was low-season as there were very few guests and most were Japanese tourists, three American families and ourselves! I had been a little sceptical of this hotel as this wasn’t our ... read more

LA AT NIGHT OK. So we’re still in LA and after our bus tour we walked around a little in Hollywood and took in the sights before having dinner. As for the photos, I’ve decided to put in the night time photos of Downtown LA as well as Hollywood. For variety! I don’t know whether it’s ‘cos its low-season or it’s winter but there weren’t really a lot of people about and it made moving around much easier. I was expecting a mass of crowds that you would have to heave through or something, according to the TV shows! I noticed there there seemed to be a lot of Macy’s shops around. I wonder whether they’ve gone downscale?! I also saw that The Screen Actors Guild would give out their awards at the end of January. ... read more

Hi Friends and Family, Its our second day and after a well deserved rest, we decided to check out the rest of the city whilst looking for breakfast. Honestly, the buildings are so tall and shiny that they're quite overwhelming and its not even anything close to the skyscraper entity of New York! As I told you the day before, we're in the Financial District which means on Saturday everything is shut and boy did we find that out the hard way. We spotted a nice restaurant that we thought would fit the bill of being local and child-friendly, however when we got there, we discovered its closed on Saturdays and Sundays. In fact, everything was! So, we decided to go to The Grand Central Market surely, there would be warm home-cooked food at a market. ... read more

Hi Friends & Family, We’re finally off. Yeah baby! Wooo!! We practically didn’t sleep at all ‘cos: 1. The excitement. 2. We have to get up at 04:00 at the very latest. 3. I was doing the housework – cleaning and mopping in order to have a tranquil house of calmness after the madness of travelling all around California in under 3 weeks AND combating jetlag! This was our first trip to North America but definitely not our last. Funnily enough, I always thought that my first trip to the USA would be to New York but due to the fact that we had TWO family tragedies in 2010 and we needed to have a holiday TOGETHER- All three of us-we opted for California instead. A wonderful mixture of sunshine, snow, mountains, beaches, cities and rural ... read more