25/07/09 Saturday Day 345 After checking out we drove the 160 kilometres to Los Angeles. We are staying in Long Beach which is about 20 miles south of downtown LA. We eventually found our hotel, the Maya Hotel, which turned out to be about 2 miles from Long Beach itself. This didn’t look good at all. Luckily the reception lady told us that there’s a free bus that runs around the area. We were too early to check into our hotel so we dropped our bags in their storage room until we came back from dropping the car back to the [View Full Entry]

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24/07/09 Friday Day 344 We drove to the boarder (only took about 30 minutes from San Diego) where you can park your car and then cross the boarder by foot. They recommend you don’t take a rental car over the boarder as US insurance doesn’t work over there so you could be in a spot of bother if someone whacks into you! Going through by foot was a breeze. No one stops or asks you anything. There’s no passport or security check. Also looking at the cars going through it seems like that’s also quick. We even went to the tourist [View Full Entry]

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23/07/09 Thursday Day 343 Bit of a drive today to San Diego, some 220 miles in total with nearly all of it on a motorway. Thank god the car has cruise control. So handy! Also the amount of weaving by drivers on the motorway is nuts. There’s no rules at all by the looks of it! There was an awful amount of traffic going through Los Angeles but once we got past that it was full speed again to San Diego. We’re staying in Mission Beach which is on the north side of San Diego. We checked out a few motels [View Full Entry]

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22/07/09 Wednesday Day 342 On arriving here we went to the tourist office to check out our accommodation options again. Your one behind the counter was really pushing this place that was miles away from the beach where we wanted to stay. We ended up staying in Days Inn motel which was only about 2 blocks from the beach. It also turned out cheaper than your one at the tourist office said. It was mid afternoon by the time we checked in so after we got some lunch we headed for the beach for some badly needed sunbathing. We’re getting a [View Full Entry]

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21/07/09 Tuesday Day 341 We headed from Monterey to San Luis Obispo on the 1 highway which goes down the coast of California. There’s some amazing views on the way although at times we were covered in fog which seemed to take ages to burn off. There’s a couple of small areas to stop on the way down, most of the places having only 1 shop, 1 restaurant and petrol pumps. We found oil coming out of the grill from the front of the car. We stopped at a place called Gorda for a spot of lunch. On closer inspection of [View Full Entry]

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20/07/09 Monday Day 340 After checking out of the hostel we headed only around the corner to Avis to pick up our rental car, which turned out to be a Ford Focus automatic. We were going to head north a bit but since we’re handing it back on Saturday we decided to head south instead. Getting out of San Francisco was pretty easy, again thanks to my trusty phone sat nav! First stop on the way down was Santa Cruz. We had thought about staying here but it was a bit too close to San Francisco for us to stay. We [View Full Entry]

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17/07/09 Friday Day 337 After arriving in San Francisco airport we got our bags and headed for the train that goes into the city. The ticket machine is one of the most complicated I’ve seen. Basically you put in your money first and then start subtracting values until you get to how much your fare is. Luckily there was a member of staff on hand to help everyone! We got the train to the Civic Centre in the middle of the city. We should have gone one stop more to Powell Street. The walk from the Civic Centre to our hostel [View Full Entry]

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14/07/09 Tuesday Day 334 Our motel, the Super 8 motel, has a free shuttle bus to the airport. Today we fly to Las Vegas where we’re staying at Caesars Palace for the next 3 days. The flight from LA to Vegas is only 1 hour. The heat in Vegas was cruel. It’s only like 10am and it’s already 97 degrees American talk, that’s something like in the high 30’s. We got another shuttle bus to our hotel. Luckily we were able to check in because there was a huge line checking out. The lobby here is massive. We’re on the top [View Full Entry]

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01/07/09 Wednesday Day 321 Aloha Our flight wasn’t the best one at all. We were hoping we’d get tv screens in the back of the headrests in front of us but we didn’t. Instead there was one tv on the roof of the plane and another projected screen at the front of our section. We basically had to strain our necks to see the tv in the roof and we were too far from the projected screen. After the second movie, (first one was Duplicity, second one was 17 again), it was lights out and we all slept for a bit. [View Full Entry]

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30/06/09 - 01/07/09 Monday - Wednesday Day 318 - 320 These few days were spent just arsing around the city, wasting time until we catch our flight to Hawaii Wednesday night. We got our summer clothes from Viv (thanks again) and sorted out our bags and post more stuff home. We also met up with Micheal and Viv for lunch on Tuesday. [View Full Entry]

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