After another 11 hour fight, we reach Istanbul, and we find it is somewhat milder, a fresh 12 degrees at 6.30am. Our Neon Tours shuttle takes us to the Centrum Hotel, located in the heart of downtown Istanbul in the old quarter, our home for the next couple of days. Our Hotel is located in a really cool area full of tiny narrow cobbled streets and full of restaurants and little shops, also very close to many of the highlights of Istanbul. There are mosques everywhere, almost every block has a mosque on it and the merging of Eastern and western cultures is everywhere. Our first experience of the “call to prayer’ was surreal and haunting with the call going out over the whole city but from the different mosques with different songs, very strange. To ... read more

Fancy that no dramas leaving good ole NZ this time, for those first time readers last time we left for an overseas trip we got hauled out from boarding because they found something suspicious in our luggage, a printer, however I digress. Arriving in Hong king airport in fog, it was hard to see many details of the landscape apart from mountains. Breezing through customs, like no check of our baggage at all we couldn’t find our transfer people and I didn’t have the contact details in my hand luggage it was packed away, so I am stressed to the max after a long flight and no sleep, we finally figured out we were in the wrong entry area, for those of you who don’t know HK airport is really really huge, like bigger than a ... read more

Today it was off for our trip to Hollywood so it was onto the public bus again heading to downtown LA, after a 1.5 hour trip we arrived and started looking for a way out to Hollywood. We started for the subway but on the way found a hop on off bus and jumped on that. We got to Hollywood around 11.00 to be met with the crazy Hollywood locals, guys dressed as Superman, Jack Sparrow and even Darth Vader all looking for money for photos. Mooching around Hollywood Boulevard and the historic Chinese and Kodak theaters was like being the movies. Deciding to jump back on to the bus we headed off towards Beverly Hills along the Sunset strip we finally got to Rodeo Drive and the “posh” part of town, to me it just ... read more

Arriving back at Long Beach around 7.00am we debarked at 10.00 and returned to the states via the gang plank and customs. Finding the luggage was a breeze but getting the shuttle was a little different. As we were going to Anaheim which is about an hours drive from Long Beach the drivers were not too keen and seemed to want the close trips to the airport etc. Finally securing a ride we arrived at the hotel outside Disneyland around 1pm. The Carousel Inn is a small motel type place, clean comfortable with great staff and above all quite cheap for Disneyland. With only a part day left we decided to visit Disneytown, a free entry shopping area adjacent to Disneyland itself. Worth visiting but only for shopping which is sooooo expensive... read more

Heading on the return leg to Long Beach LA, all there was to do was eat, sit by the pool and drank cocktails. Not much to report.... read more