Los Angeles and San Francisco

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It´s been far too long since my last blog entry. But for once we´ve been quite busy...

Our first stop in the USA was L.A. We spent a couple of nights in a hostel in Venice. Venice Beach is a fun place with crazy people everywhere. Moreover it isn´t as posh and superficial as many other places in L.A.

After the long flight from Sydney to L.A. we suffered from Jetlag. It was quite a funny experience. We woke up in the middle of the night, couldn´t fall asleep and were hungry at weird times. Due to our jetlag and Philipp´s cold we didn´t do much the first couple of days. Once we felt better, we rented bikes and rode them along the Pacific Coast. We saw some dolphins while chilling on Santa Monica Pier and ate ice cream in Marina del Rey. For the next day we´d booked a sightseeing tour in L.A. Even though we´d sworn to ourselves to never sit in a minibus again, this is exactly what we did. We saw the few historical sites that L.A. offers. Most of the tour was dedicated to celebrity hunting though... The bus took us to Beverly Hills, Belair, Hollywood, Mullholland Drive and all those places where the celebrities hide their mansions behind huge hedges. I´m not blaming them I´d do the same. Well, we got to see some of Nicolas Cages cars and one of the actresses from Grey´s Anatomy. Since I´ve never seen the show I would never have recognized her... But some of the women in the bus surely did. They went crazy and started screaming... It was quite an experience and I absolutely understand every celebrity moving to Switzerland in order to escape those crazy fans.

The second of may we took the Greyhound bus to San Jose, CA. There we experienced a very warm and friendly welcome by the family of Philipp´s cousin Jasmin. We enjoyed the family life and Philipp tried to catch up on his family´s history. He knew about as little about his family as I do about mine (gell, Roli). What a shame. But I think we´ll just blame our parents. That makes it a lot easier.

While staying with family Pape in San Jose we took the train to San Francisco twice. The first day we went to Alcatraz, ate clam chowder on pier 39, rode the cable cars and bought ourselves some great wind jackets. The second day we rode the cable cars again, did some shopping in Chinatown and simply enjoyed the beautiful city by walking around.

On saturday family Pape took us to the peninsula of Monterrey. Its landspace is absolutely stunning. The coast, the sea, the flowers, everything. I loved it. For lunch we had appetizers consisting of several samples of clam chowder. The main course we later enjoyed sitting at the coast surroundes by thousands of purple flowers (don´t ask me for the flower´s name). It was a little chilly but nevertheless a beautiful spot.

Sunday, again the family´s minivan was packed for a ride to San Francisco. We drove along the coast and once again got to see the pretty landscape of coastal California. The main aim of this tour was to check out the Golden Gate bridge, of course. It is amazing that bridge. It´s great to look at and even more fun to drive over. That day was extremely hot and that´s probably the reason why everyone living in San Francisco was outside enjoying the weather. The beaches, parks and streets were full of happy looking people. We drove along Lombardo street, the financial district, Alamo Square and many other remarkable sites.

Beside all the sightseeing we still had some time for relaxing. I learned how to play Poker, Philipp finally got to see Shrek with princess Fiona sitting on his lap, we cooked Roesti and Bratwuerste, baked breakfast cake aka Zopf and enjoyed the friendly atmosphere. We had a great time.

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