The End of an era

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The final frontier is upon us as we land down in Los Angeles ready for the short journey to Santa Monica, a trendy beach city nearby.

From Santa Monica we decided to do a couple of activities, the first being a tour round Hollywood, included a look at some very nice houses owned by celebrities. Personally i felt this was a bit invasive, however I don't have that much sympathy for them when you see the life they have to live. The highlight of the tour for our driver seemed to be pointing out the ambulance that Michael Jackson was taken to hospital in... everyone in Hollywood does seem very strange and obsessed with everything to do with celebrities! The other stops on the tour included the designer Rodeo Drive (from Pretty Woman), Hollywood Boulevard, and a look at the walk of fame and Chinese theatre. We also manages to fit in a look at the world famous Hollywood sign, which was a bit of a disappointment.

As part of an organised activity from the hostel, we went to watch a baseball game; The LA Dodgers V San Diego Padres. Our tickets were in the nosebleed seats, which means it's very high up, and not that you may get hit in the face and thus have a nose bleed as Julia though(although I think this was still a possibility). Baseball was quite a slow game, and probably not something that we would avidly follow if we were American, but there was a lot of chanting, dancing and mexican waves from the crowd, and it seemed that most people went for that rather than the actual sport. The Dodgers won, and we had a nice night.

Next stop was Las Vegas via a trip on the American Greyhound, which is nothing like it's Australian cousin. We didn't particularly enjoy our greyhound experience, which included the ticket desk refusing to let us on as we had printed two tickets per page to save paper, a few alcoholics sneaking drinks of whisky from brown paper bags at 7am, and the bizarre queueing system which we weren't aware of, and consequently even though we were the first there we were last on the bus!

We finally arrived in the 'city that never sleeps', and checked into our beautiful 4* hotel (first bit of luxury in a long time!), the Stratosphere. It was right on the end of the strip, so we had to catch a bus into the main casino area, but we had an amazing view from the tallest building in the States, west of Mississippi.

Vegas was an interesting experience, although being our last week of a 15 month trip we hadn't quite got the money to enjoy it properly, and it's not the place to be a cheapskate! We played in one poker game, Julia was rubbish but Dan managed a respectable 11th place. If he could have just hung on for a few more minutes to 8th place there was big cash prizes. Next time though...

From Vegas we did a daytrip to The Grand Canyon. What an amazing day, which pictures do no justice to whatsoever. The journey there took over 5 hours as we went to the South Rim, where supposedly the view was the best. We stopped at two viewpoints, and had a short walk down into the canyon. It was totally breathtaking, and just seemed to go on forever. We're glad to have seen it, although it would be wonderful to go back some time and spend a few days trekking or white water rafting down the Colorado river.

Back to L.A. for our final 3 days. We stayed in a hotel in West Hollywood, which looked great on the website, but we were slightly scared to leave to hotel as its not a very nice part of town, and we even saw some gang fights just outside our hotel! We went to Universal studios, where many of the big American blockbusters have been filmed, had a look around some movie sets, and we're shown some great special effects. The rest of the time we just chilled by the hotel pool, ate American-sized pizza and generally counted down the minutes until we would be back in England! First time in 15 months that we had missed home properly!

The journey home was uneventful, and after a 10 hour flight we arrived back on home soil. English money seemed very strange, and all of the cars looked like they had the wrong numberplates on. It was lovely to see family again, but in a way it doesn't feel like it's been a long time at all, as everyone and everything has not changed much since we left.

So, until our next journey, thank you for reading, and ka kite ano.

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