Homeward Bound

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USA to home
Alex & Laura Enroute to the States from Fiji we have the strange experience of crossing the Date Line. Not only does this mean we have a 42 hour day (a large proportion of this spent travelling I might add) we actually land earlier than we took off. Thus we arrive at LAX at 14:30 on March 15th having left Fiji at 22:30 on March 15th. Most peculiar. We had spent a long time choosing where to stay in L.A as the city is so vast and public transport isn't great. Add to that there are some neighbourhoods where it is easier to get shot than to find a cab, and the issue takes on a whole different perspective. In the end we plumped for the Orchid Suites in Hollywood, and it was a good choice. With a huge double bedroom/sitting room, a bathroom, a small kitchenette and a hallway with floor to ceiling wardrobes the room was bigger than some of the hotels we had previously stayed in. It was also just behind Hollywood Boulevard and five minutes from the Chinese Theatre and right by the Kodak theatre (where the Oscars are held.) On our first jet-lagged evening we enjoyed walking up the Boulevard and spotting the stars (on the pavement you understand) and marvelling at the air of craziness about the place. You are just as likely to run into an alien, Elvis, Micheal Jackson or Spiderman as you are an everyday citizen. Clearly Hollywood Boulevard provides a great creche for out of work actors, of which there are a lot in Hollywood.

The next day saw us up bright and early, if still a little spaced out from having our internal clocks insist it was the middle of the night still, and off to see the Getty Centre. This was something recommended to us by several people at home, and indeed it was not disappointing. Set in the Hollywood hills it was built by architect Richard Meier to house the vast J. Paul Getty art collection, although really it was the buildings and gardens we had come to see. The buildings themselves are a sort of off white colour (the architect was not allowed his trademark white colour for fear of glare to the surrounding very rich residents) and are built using aluminium tiles that are either 30cmx30cm or a multiple of 30, i.e. 90x90 or 15x15 etc. The whole complex was built along two axis which are meant to run parallell to the hill behind, nothing is out of place, not a tree, not a tile, not a plant. If a tree grows a little crooked it is ripped out and replaced with a more obediant one. Plants can only have flowers of white, or if pushed, lavender, woe betide any tree or plant that should get ideas above his station and grow taller than any building, a large pair of shears will be coming your way. All this serves to give an architectually interesting building, but the impression that the architect who built it was a right arse. This was reinforced on an architecture tour we undertook. Meant to be 45 minutes long, it soon ran over and we were forced to sneak away in order to eat lunch and view the cactus gardens before our prebooked transport arrived to collect us. Thus we spent our final 45 minutes creeping around the place and lurking on corners to prevent any embarrassing encounters with the tour guide we had left uncermoniously. Still the cactus gardens with the view of downtown L.A in the background were worth it. The other tour we had taken prior to the architect tour was the garden tour. The gardens of the Getty Centre were designed by Robert Irwin, who, interestingly, isn't a gardener. He was in fact an artist and so designed the garden according to light and colour and texture and other artistic type things, and then employed a real gardener to supply the necessary plants and stones. This must of been a real headache for the poor gardener trying to find suitable artistic plants that weren't going to keel over and die in the L.A climate. Still the result is stunning with many different features, using plants, rocks and water. Apparantly Richard Meiers didn't think so however, and much sniping seems to have been done on his part, presumably because the garden is not in his favourite (boring) pristine white colour. He must be hell to live with.

Having successfully avoided our abandoned tour group we caught our transport and headed back into Hollywood to pick up our second tour of the day of Movie Stars Homes. This involved being driven round in a small minibus by a tour guide who pointed out the different houses and hangouts of the stars, mainly in Bel Air and Beverly Hills. Quite often all that could be seen was a high fence/hedge or some nice railings, but we did get a good beak at Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas' house, Robbie Williams pad and Sean Connery's abode. We weren't allowed to look at Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' place as they will call the Bel Air Patrol (local heavies) on any tour bus they see. Spoilsports. We also got to see the notorious Viper Room club where River Phoenix died, a variety of celeb hangouts, and the ridiculously priced Rodeo Drive. All this with a commentary from our tour guide, himself a star of various low budget films, plus a detailed account of his movie career so far. So why are you still driving a tour bus hmmm?

Saturday, and our final day in L.A, saw us catching the subway up one stop to visit Universal Studios. Here it was surprisingly free of maurading children and stupidly long queues and we managed to go on both the studio tour and all the rides we wanted too without standing in line for more than 20 minutes. Result. The best bit by far is the studio tour where you get trundled past the big warehouses which hold all the indoor sets as well as the outdoor sets, which include the clock tower and square from Back to the Future, the Bates Motel and, my favourite, Wisteria Lane from Desperate Housewives! Not many people can claim to have visited both Ramsey Street AND Wisteria Lane I'm sure. Exciting rides we went on include the Mummy rollercoaster where I decided that really I didn't like rollercoasters anymore, shortly before the rollercoaster reversed it's course and whipped us backwards around bends and drops in the dark. Slightly shaken we stumbled off and headed for the Jurassic Park ride which involved floating about on water and admiring dinosaurs, before you hurtle down a steep drop into strongly chlorinated water at the bottom. Somewhat more sedate attractions included a 3D shrek movie where Donkey looms out of the screen and sneezes all over you (really a jet of water sprayed out from the seat in front) and the Back Draft set where you watch all manner of pyrotechnics and explosions.

Next day we were up bright and early to catch a Greyhound bus from a dodgy part of L.A. and travel 300 mile across desert to a dodgy part of Las Vegas. Why are all bus terminals in bad locations? On arrival in Vegas the temperature was 86 degrees and the sun was blazing. We found a cab to take us to our final hotel of the trip, Excalibur. Shaped like a children's toy castle it is near the end of the strip between the Luxor Pyramid and New York New York. Again a vast room greeted us, always nice, although the hotel pool was being rebuilt necessitating us to mooch over to the Luxor and use their pool instead. Vegas was a bright and overwhelming city in which to conclude our RTW trip, vastly different to the majority of places we had been to so far. Still we made the most of it. On our first day Alex entered a poker tournament and managed to not disgrace our travelling monkey reputation, although he also failed to win back all the money we had spent thus far on the trip which would have enabled us to go back round the world, perhaps the other way. In the evening we went to the Tournament of Kings dinner show, where you sit in sections (we were Dragon section) and eat your food with your fingers and drink from medieval (plastic) tankards and shout things like Huzzah at appropriate moments. The entertainment includes jousting, other horseback games, some dancing (boring) and acrobatics (better) and a rather thin plot about King Arthurs son Christopher (I think they have read their legend book wrong there.) Still it was good fun and you got to cheer for your knight during the competion. Our knight was the bad dude, thank goodness, as the others were a right bunch of suck ups. Following dinner we perused the King Arthur game hall where Alex won a cuddly dragon by managing to fire a stuffed witch into a cauldron using a mallet and I won 45 bucks playing roulette by going for my seat number at dinner, lucky 13. All in all a good night.

Tuesday was the final full day of our trip and we spent it playing the Deal or No Deal? slot machine (disappointingly not like the show) and taking a tour of the Grand Canyon and Hoover dam. This involved taking a light aircraft from Boulder City up and over the dam and canyon. I found my heart pumping somewhat following take off until I realised I didn't have to jump out of this plane, and settled down to enjoy the flight. With reasonably few mid air jolts leading you to believe you are about to plummet to your death 24 hours before arriving back in you home country, the scenary was fantastic. Reminiscent of the red rocks we had seen in Australia's outback the setting sun made it all the more atmospheric. Alex also enjoyed the flight as the last flight he had taken over the Grand Canyon had involved the lady in front of him being sick everywhere. And thus we headed back to Vegas and our final night free of responsibility and commitment, and took a walk down the strip. Even more spectacular when lit up at night, the only disappointment was that they were experiencing 'high winds' (more like a strong breeze) and thus none of the shows such as Bellagio fountains and Treasaure Island's pirate ship were running. We did take a look at the St Mark's Square in the Venetian which quite freaked us out as it is designed to look like permenant daytime there and the effect is spookily accurate. Foot sore we headed back to our own castle and collapsed.

So our final day dawned and we packed up our rucksacks for the final (and umpteenth) time, checked out, and headed for the breakfast buffet where you could marvel at the amount the American's eat, before catching a shuttle bus to Vegas airport. Here we were quizzed again by security (we are LEAVING your country for goodness sake) and headed into the disappointingly small airport lounge, having first removed shoes and stepped into a strange space age metal detector scanner thing. Before we knew it we boarded our final and 25th flight, and were on the way home. After 8 and a half hours I glanced out of the window and noted the huge bank of cloud stretching from the West Coast of Ireland and on into the distant horizon and realised we were nearly there. 141 days, 25 flights, 35,000 plus miles, nine countries, three continents and several hair raising bus journeys later we were back in Blighty. We landed at 10 am on March 22nd to temperatures of 4 degrees and snow. There was no doubting we were home. At least we had the best suntans.

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Photos

A mighty big hole in the ground
Grand Canyon