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Published: September 26th 2008
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The family
The effects of the cider drinking starting to tell? Hi all.
Sorry its been a while. Ok, where to start. Shortly after our last blog entry our plans changed and after a quick drop in to London, we set off in the car with Vic (Amy's sister) and her boyfriend Marcus to drive to San Sebastian in Spain via Bordeaux for a bit of wine tasting and good food.
San Sebastian is beautiful with fantastic sandy beaches and waves surrounded by hills and combined with a really pretty old town full of pintxos bars (bars dedicated to Basque style tapas and cider). However, what San Sebastian is really known for is being the hometown of the Urrestarazu clan and it was great to be able to visit all the family. It also gave us a good opportunity to keep up our spanish and practice on them, quite how much they understood I'm not sure but generally I think we got our points across.
We spent a really relaxing 10 days in San Sebastian with Amy's family seeing the sights, swimming in the sea, eating sea food and drinking cider before the workers, Vic and Marcus, had to leave us and fly back to the UK. Our next
stop was again inspired by wine and with a tiny map on the back of a wine bottle to follow, we set off for the Rioja region (I'd always thought it was a grape variety but there you go). The contrast between the green and lush San Sebastian to the drier and hotter landscape in more central spain is amazing. We stayed in this lovely old fortified village called La Guardia, right in the heart of the region, where they didn't allow cars as it could disturb the caves where all the wine is stored - now thats commitment! From Rioja, we then crossed the border back into France, following the south coast round to San Tropez, Cannes, and Monaco to admire the yachts and flash cars, before heading back north through the Loire valley and finally Paris.
During our brief time back in London, we managed to make a start on our wedding plans, drum with MULL and sort out our plans for the next leg of our travels, which almost brings us up to date, except for what we're doing now....
Our first stop in Part 2 is the USA. We flew into LA just over
Monaco
Trying to look the part outside Monte Carlo Casino a week ago where we spent a couple of nights with the stars...well almost. Whilst walking down Hollywood's walk of fame we got bullied into doing a tour of the celebrity homes and so we spent a slightly bizaare but very American couple of hours admiring the homes of David Beckham, Tom Cruise, etc. Strangely they didn't seem to want to meet us that day but we were assured that they did live there somewhere behind the huge gates. We also spent a really enjoyable evening with Amy's friend Eunice who was able to take us to some of the hot spots of LA.
From LA we carried on the American dream by flying to Vegas. Being a Vegas virgin it was really good fun walking round the various themed casinos such as New York, Paris, the Venetian and admiring the efforts that they'd gone to to find new gimmicks. The luxury establishment that we were staying at, Hooters, was also quite comedy, especially watching the oldies in cowboy hats dancing in the Dixie bar. Our gambling skills were not impressive however, both in terms of our own skills and our cooling effect on any table that we watched
Portland
Going native in Portland in the local Moroccan restaurant - seriously the casinos should have been paying us for the amount we must have saved them over the nights we were there. Fortunately however we were able to resist spending all our fortune and were just about able to afford the flight from Vegas to Portland which is up the west coast in Oregon and which is where we are now. We've spent a really enjoyable few days staying with my Aunt and Uncle, getting to see Portland, sampling beer, being arty in museums and film houses and drinking coffee....and that really does bring us up to date.
In a few minutes time we're heading off to the airport to fly back to LA and then straight on to Aukland where hopefully we'll be able to find a campervan to take us round New Zealand for a month. I think the weird time differences and date line mean that we don't exist on the 26th September so I hope you all have fun on that day but not too much as it would be annoying to miss out on something amazing that happened.
Many thanks to Eunice and Aunt Gillian and Uncle Peter for entertaining us and
putting up with us in LA and Portland.
Till next time from New Zealand. Love Si and Amy
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