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Published: September 27th 2006
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The good ole' U S of A. It's funny, y'know, when one considers all the appalling stereotypes we have about Americans. Amazingly, thus far, most of them have proved to be quite untrue. Thus far.
So we whizzed through border control at LAX without so much as a hiccup. For anyone on our plane or the 747 that flew in from Narita about 10 minutes beforehand. LAX seems to be a remarkably simple airport for arrivals - our domestic flights next week promise to be more of a challenge. We jumped a shuttle to the Greyhound terminal, which proved to be wise indeed, as the terminal just happens to be in.....SOUTH CENTRAL! Not the nicest of places and an incredibly blunt illustration of the poverty that afflicts so much of America. However, the station was busy, with a lot of people heading down this way to start university this week.
The bus trip down was interesting, mostly from a 'driving on a 6 lane highway and looking at cars' point of view. Astonishingly, most of the cars on LA's roads seem to be brand spanking new. In fact, almost everywhere we've been, the cars seem to all be shiny
The USS Ronnie Reagan and the USS Nimitz
This was as close as we could take pictures! and nice. There's something going on here that we don't know about. Anyway, our hostel in the Gaslamp quarter is comfortable enough, just stinking hot all the time. Rooming in seperate dorms was weird, but that happens over here.
Monday morning meant a visit to the USS Midway (and the military history geek went bananas I can tell you) and I've never been on a boat that was so.....compact. It wasn't as big as I expected and was dwarfed by the USS Ronnie Reagan and the USS Nimitz across the harbour (more on that later!) Everything is crammed in tight, and there was clearly no room for error on a boat like that. It had a lovely selection of planes on board - sadly no WW II era ones, as they're off being restored, but still some great Korea and Vietnam planes as well as the shiny new ones. (I won't go into details but Hornets, F14s, A6s Vikings, naval AWACS and a wickedly cool minigun armed Iroquois helicopter) I don't think Jen hated it that much, and even admitted to learning a thing or two!
We spent some time listening to Midway vets (mostly from the Korean
and early-Vietnam era) talking about their experiences and about the boat and how she worked before we jumped the ferry to Coronada. It's an isthmus across San Diego Bay but they call it 'The Island.' We ambled into the city there (a surprisingly hard 10 block walk in the midday sun) and admired the architectural hideousness of the Hotel del Coronado which I cannot describe, except to say that it's ghastly. You can see it in the 1958 Marilyn Munroe classic 'Some Like it Hot.' On the ferry ride back we made an unscheduled stop (complete with bag search) at the Coronado Naval Base, inside the anti-sub carrier cordon, and I got within about 100 metres of the bow of the USS Ronnie Reagan. Now that's one heck of a boat! The largest, newest carrier in the US Navy. WOW!
We got a beaut glimpse of some serious SDPD heavy handedness as six officers arrested a single anti-war protester. Granted, he was blocking six lanes of traffic, but so not the point! 😊 The anti-war protest outside Horton Plaza (a Westfield no less!) was small but vocal and representative of a huge range of people.
Anyway, I'm rambling.
A Soviet Submarine
and I still don't know where this came from! So today we pottered up to Balboa park with a bus driver who could learn a thing or two about manners, courtesy and competent driving from the guy who runs the 4.50 bus to Mairangi. We got off the bus way too early and fortunately found a free 'tram' (read tram body on truck?!) up to the zoo. It's a stunning institution, albeit slightly oddly laid out, but we got up close and personal with giant Pandas, an albino python, tapirs, elephants and a feeding Malayan tiger who was more interested in eating his keeper! Post-zoo we realised one can see too many animals so we adjourned to the San Diego art museum. I have now seen my first real Rubens, Giotto, Tintoretto and yes, Mum and Dad, my very first El Greco - and they were all magnificent! There was some really stunning art there - a very nice collection of Renaissance portraits and religious icons as well as some fine early-modern and modern US material. The whole of Balboa park is really lovely and it has a great collection of Spanish-inspired architecture as well as some newer, less pleasant buildings. It's really a shame we didn't have more
What a beer!
Mexican beer rocks! time to spend there.
A bus back into town with a much more pleasant driver and we picked up tickets to LA, ate some Ben and Jerry's ice cream and tried out our first American pizza. The food here has been surprisingly good and remarkably, we've been able to eat really healthily thanks to Ralph's supermarket round the corner - complete with its 1.75L bottles of vodka, chocolate dipped Oreos and 3 pound bags of potato chips.
*shudder* So, we're off to LA tomorrow by train, which should be a nice change from the road network. However we do get to try and navigate the LA underground tomorrow, which should be a real hoot. Finally my apologies that there are no photos as yet We've found an internet cafe that can do the digital camera and we're about to leave! So I promise to add those as soon as I can.
Hope you're all well and taking care of yourselves,
Talk again soon,
Al and Jen
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