Los Angeles
After another crummy flight with Air New Zealand we touched down in LA in the early afternoon, and set about finding our hostel. Although our hostel had a great location in the centre of Hollywood, it was a dirty ramshackle old place that we were pleased to leave.
Hollywood is probably the most over rated town on earth. Most people are either crack-whores or hookers, and those that aren’t are vain and stupid. We used to tell people that Tabi was from London, but I was from England, and people assumed that they were two different countries.
We spent the day trying to find the set of Scrubs, and in the evening we went to see a comedy show being filmed, after being accosted in the street by one of the crew who promised us free drinks if we showed up. In the end, the show was too full of ‘VIPs’ so they ended up paying us $10 each to go away.
The next few days were spent in Disneyland and Disney’s Californian Adventure parks, which was entertaining, but much what you’d expect. There were one or two rides that we hadn’t been on, including a vertical drop rollercoaster. When at the top, if you drop a penny just as the coaster falls, it’ll float in front of you for the entire ride.
San Francisco
We spent our few days in San Francisco with people Tabi (sort of) knows, Steve and Cindy. They were excellent hosts, which made for a very relaxing time.
We ate the local specialty, Dungeness Crab and visited the famous Pier as well as getting a look at the Golden Gate Bridge, on our second day went driving around the Napa Valley vineyards, quaffing back $100 bottles of wine as we went.
Steve has a huge collection of wine, so on our final day, we cracked a few more bottles open, smoked our cigars and got pleasantly drunk (again).
Seattle
Seattle is bloody freezing, as we got off the plane the only thing that stood between us and freezing to death in our summer clothes was the jumpers Steve and Cindy very kindly lent us. We had a hostel pre-booked for the first night, which was good as our flight was a few hours ‘re-scheduled’, which seems to be another word for ‘late’.
For our second night on Valentines Day we found an excellent package online, staying in a suite at the crown plaza with dinner, breakfast and champagne for $100. We spent most of the actual day shopping for warmer clothes.
Tabi’s mum has now arrived in town for a bit of a holiday and to drive us up to Vancouver.
I found the world's first Starbucks, which has a lot more character than any of the others.
There’s lots more to say, but we’ve only got an hour on these computers, so hopefully I’ll do a better update next time.