San Diego & LA

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So, it has been a long time since last time we spoke. It's not you..... it's me. I got busy and lazy in equal measures with real life in Vancouver so haven't updated this blog in quite some time. Just for those of you who don't know, I haven't been hanging out in Utah and the Grand Canyon for the last 4 months, but to find out what I have been up to, read on (there's your hook right there).

So we arrived in San Diego after a cool Greyhound journey through the desert of the Southern States. It was fairly late in the evening, so we headed straight to the hostel. After a ten minute walk from the station we arrived at the HI San Diego, nestled right in the heart of the trendy and happening Gaslamp District. The hostel was really nicely decorated and the staff were really friendly. After dumping our stuff we went out for some pizza from this great little pizza joint round the corner and retired for the evening for a busy day of exploring tomorrow.

The next morning Beth had a Skype date with her family so I went into the communal area to have a game of chess with James. I arrived to find him chatting to someone who he'd met in his room. After a brief chat with him and listening to him play some exceptional guitar, I found out he was from the UK. Not only that, he happened to come from Bournemouth (about 30 miles from my home town) and played guitar for a band called The Huckleberries who I have seen busking in Salisbury on many an occasion. If fact, I happened to know that Beth's parents have their CD, so went and told them. What a strange, small world. Following this we went out for an explore of the local area and spent most of the afternoon hanging out in Balboa park, seeing the Chinese gardens, as well as some fairly beautiful scenery. We all chipped in money for the huge evening meal which was a three-course pasta dish cooked by the very hospitable hostel staff. In the evening me and James went out for some beers with Duncan (the Huckleberry) and one of his friends. It was a good evening and it resulted in a few beers at an Irish pub, before retreating to a cheaper bar for some ridiculously strong margaritas. Was nice to hang out with these guys and after a few too many drinks me and James slumped back to the hostel.

Friday was the day I was really looking forward to as we went to San Diego Zoo. This was a whole day activity and completely lived up to my expectations. Yes, it was pretty expensive, but it happens to have an immense variety of animals, including many which are critically endangered - Including the Giant Panda! It was so large we had to get cable cars and buses around to certain parts of it. There's nothing particularly new to tell you about this besides the fact that it lives up to its sterling reputation and to go if you get the chance (but remember to bring your walking shoes).

Saturday we planned a trip to the beach. Now let me state that at this point that the date was the 22nd October, and although it wasn't cold or raining, it was by no means hot. It was that kind of weather that back in England you'll find British tourists pouring down to the beaches to soak up the first semblance of summer. Still, we'd heard that the beaches here were beautiful, so we headed down to the highly recommended Coronado beach. It was a stunning beach; miles and miles of golden sand lined with millionaire housing. Although at times me and James can seem like incredibly cultured and sophisticated individual I will state now that this day wasn't one of them. We spent a large portion of this day building a...... sand fort. It was incredible. There's nothing quite like the exhilaration of building a fort with defensive walls and then waiting for the tide to come back in and destroy it. Unfortunately this took a very long time for the tide to come in, but at least in the mean time we had a beautiful view; and even saw wild dolphins swimming past. In the evening we snapped after one too many Subways or other crappy cheap food stuffs, so decided to go out for a meal with cutlery and everything. Our place of choice was a delicious restaurant called Mint Thai. It felt good to have proper food.

On Sunday we had a day of running errands. James had bought a truly terrible laptop in NYC and had left the charger at one of the motels we stayed at in Utah, so set out to a distant Walmart to try and get a new one. I had a date with the barbers, as the large mop on my head was getting a little out of hand. An hour later and too many dollars down (I mean seriously, I've gotta tip the hairdresser over here!) I returned back to the hostel and went for a wonder down the harbor with Beth. We found some really cool sculptures and a free modern art museum which we visited. When we got back to the hostel we found that they were doing an art show at the hostel to exhibit local artists. We got some food and looked around at some of the great art on show, before retiring to bed. All in all San Diego was a nice city, but to me it wasn't as clean or upmarket as I thought, and didn't have the character of those 'rough around the edges' cities.

The next day we got up for the Greyhound to LA. I had been told by various people prior to my visit to LA that it wasn't a very nice city. This contradicted everything that film and Hollywood had told me about this city. Basically, there is no real centre to the city and it is more like a sprawling urban environment of 88 connected cities. The bus passed through many of these "charming" districts, such as Compton - during our 30 second stay we actually saw a fight. The Greyhound pulled into an area which looked like a post war Dresden, but luckily we secured a transfer bus to the central train-station in the town. We eventually arrived at the USA Hostel we were staying at just off Hollywood Boulevard. It was a pretty nice place, with more friendly staff and the bed even had the major plus point of their own shelf, power socket and privacy curtain..... it's the little luxuries when you're traveling. We headed straight out to explore the world famous street. We saw the walk of fame (although almost every Tom, Dick or Harry seemed to have one), saw the Kodiak Theatre and Grauman's Chinese Theatre and even caught a glimpse of the Hollywood sign. Beth was extremely excited by a lot of this stuff as she's always been into the whole celebrity/Hollywood thing, but I gotta say, the whole thing left me feeling cold. The whole place was just pretty dirty and fake looking and housed an even higher mentalist count than all of the other cities we went to. I was most excited to find a 'Fresh and Easy' (which is Tesco's name in the US) so I picked up some, sorely missed, Robinson's squash! We headed back to the hostel with some beers and ended up playing some beer pong with some of the other travelers.

We tucked into the hostel breakfast of complimentary pancakes the following morning before setting out for our day excursion - Venice Beach. The city is so huge that it takes a very long time and a lot of public transport to get anywhere. After a few buses, which were predominently full of homeless people or people talking to their hands, we started to see some nicer areas of the famous city. Firstly we saw a bar that I'd always wanted to go to, The Troubadour. It was here that artists such as Elton John, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young came to fame! We eventually arrived in the much nicer area of Santa Monica. We took a long walk along Muscle Beach (Yes, I did have a go on the monkey bars) to Venice Beach. Now Venice Beach is to mentalists what Mecca is to the people of Islam. It is their spiritual home and it seems to be the place they all return to. That being said, I enjoyed it as a place. It had a laid back bohemian vibe and must be about the best place in the world to people watch. We went to a Chinese restaurant called 'Mao's Kitchen'.... you don't need to open too many history books to realise that this is a terrible name! We chilled out at the skate park, watching some superb talent before returning back down the beach. About half way down we spotted a small White-Tipped Angel Shark that had beached itself up on the sand. After consulting an incredibly unhelpful lifeguard, we attempted to return it to the sea. Firstly we dug a route into the sand for it to return to the ocean and then me and James tried pulling it back into the water. After a few failed attempts and near bites we unfortunately had to give up and leave the poor guy up to the gods of the food chain. After a number of long and sketchy buses, we were back to the hostel. We donated some money so we could have some BBQ food which was being put on by the hostel. We mingled with a few of the other guests, and met a guy called Tim who was also in our room, and was from Birmingham. We hung out for the evening and watched some of the live music which the hostel had put on and had a few beers.

The next day we headed out for the thing I was most looking forward to in this city, The Griffith Observatory. This is a gold-class observatory, with a science museum and planetarium built into it. We told Tim about this place and he ended up coming along with us. We arrived a little before opening, so got some great shots from the hill of downtown or across at the Hollywood sign. After this we went in and I was instantly blown away by the Foucault Pendulum (I don't have time to explain it, so here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault_pendulum). We paid a few dollars and went in to the screening in the Planterium, which put on a superb show on the creation of the universe. The rest of the afternoon we spent wondering around the museum and exhibits learning about all matter of things such as 'How the tides work', 'What the atmosphere of our solar system is made up of' and other interesting questions. It really is an incredible place, and to me, truly a diamond in the rough (that rough being LA).

Later this day we discovered that Tim was planning to do the exact same leg of his trip next as we were planning - heading north up to San Fransico. We told him that the next day we were renting a car and over the next few days, our plan was to head up route 1 to San Fransisco via Yosemite national park and invited him along. He graciously accepted and a plan was born.

The next day we headed down to the airport and picked up our rental car. Although we had four people and all our luggage we still (cheaply) chose the economy class car and fought to cram all our stuff in it. I was the only driver on this car, so the next few days had a lot of driving in store for me.

I'll quickly summarise LA. In my opinion it's a city with few redeeming features - it's dirty, vain, busy, huge and the home of the celebrity fixation which I dislike intently. It does have a number of great venues and little gems (like the Griffith) but in order to get to any of these you need a car. I enjoyed my time in this city, but I wouldn't want to stay any longer or return for a second visit.....

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