California Dreaming

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We're in California - by George

Today finds us in Long Beach, CA. Home of not only Mickey Mouse, but Helen, Zed, Jamie, Catherine and the cats...

We managed to survive both Friday the 13th's (courtesy of our first trip across the international date line) and have had a very welcome bit of family life here with George's godmother and her family.

On Saturday morning, and in the face of a 9-hour time difference from Hong Kong, George got up before 6am to go to a Classic Car Meet with Zed. There they saw a lotta weird and wonderful vehicles, including several classic Corvettes, hot-rods, Thunderbirds, Cobras and a "Horseless Carriage" - a steam powered car! In the afternoon we went to the zoo on mass and saw lots more than on any of our jungle jaunts. The best bit had to be the tiger enclosure as there were 3 young tigers (approx 9 mths old) who were play fighting.

Sunday morning we were up bright and early to go surfing at Huntington Beach, a veritable Mecca for anyone who uses words like dude and radical. To use the phrase "We learned to surf" would be slightly over-cooking it, so in the interests of remaining true to the blog, let's just say we tried hard, drank a lot of sea-water and fully deserved a monster breakfast at Zubie's afterwards! For lunch we met up with Peter and Sheck, friends from the UK who work out here, and had a good old chin wag over some delicious pasta. Driving to and from lunch in the Mason's soft top Mercedes was pretty out of sync with the rest of our travels, but we loved it. Last night the Lakers were playing the Celtics, so that called for 3 hours in front of the box and, you guessed it, more excellent food...

Today it's another blue skied, glorious day and we're off to the aquarium. The US part of our trip's being done in style and we'll be sad to leave tomorrow.

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Photos

Surfing
An early morning start for our first surf lesson

Corvette
Catherine and Kate with Zed's Corvette

Goodbye
A nice photo with the kids!