The Road to Las Vegas

On the road again today, travelling the 200 miles between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

Our first stop was in Barstow, where the town is trying to revitalise itself and attract tourists by creating huge murals on the sides of buildings, in the photograph Fiona locates us.

For lunch, we stopped at Peggy Sue's 50s Diner and had a 50s lunch in her restaurant decorated with memorabilia and "humourous" signs.

Later on we stopped at the World's Largest Thermometer which, as you can see, is pretty big.

We arrived in Las Vegas in the late afternoon and were immediately amazed by its scale and architecture. We walked along Las Vegas Boulevard, but all the outside spectacle shows were cancelled due to very high winds (up to 65mph) which also closed some of the bridge walkways between casinos and meant a lot of going the long way round.

Los Angeles

As we had been warned, Hollywood itself is not the nicest of areas, but the new Hollywood and Highland Center is beginning to change that. Unfortunately it was very foggy/smoggy so you can't see the Hollywood sign on the photograph, but be assured that it is there!

In the afternoon we went to Venice Beach, and it was even more tacky, like Blackpool on steroids.

Luckily, we then headed to Griffith Park, which was beautiful, and visited the Observatory which was very interesting and well organised. After than we went for dinner in a fabulous restaurant.

Our enduring memory of Los Angeles will, however, be of the many freeways that we spent most of the day speeding or crawling along!

Hearst Castle

Our third day started with a visit to Heart Castle set in the mountains of press baron William Randolph Hearst's ranch, overlooking the Pacific. This house (or selection of houses) was a demonstration of what the Americans do when money is no object. From the 20s to the 40s, he collected European art from the Renaissance to Gothic periods and built his mansion to house his collection and impress the great and the good. It was very over the top - however not as mis-matched as we were expecting. Christopher managed to elicit a grumpy reply from the guide by mentioning the forbidden words "Citizen" and "Kane".







Pismo Beach

We stopped at this small bay town for lunch and frozen yogurt.

Santa Barabra

You could easily believe you were in Spain here, but with better town planning. Santa Barbara was re-built in 1929 following an earthquake, in the old Spanish style. The court house was open to the public and gave us a great insight to the detail of the builidngs, as well as fabulous views over the city from the clock tower.









Point Dume
We stopped here to put our toe in the Pacific and have a romantic moment, unfortunately the mist had come in and it was freezing so this was a very shop pit stop! This beach was featured at the climax of the original Planet of the Apes, when Charlton Heston comes across the half-buried Statue of Liberty and realises the Apes planet was actually Earth. (Oh, sorry, spoilers!)

Arrive at LA
We arrived late last night in our lovely large hotel room outside LA - I love how much space you get in the States!

Day 2

Unfortunately the internet in all hotels seems to be very slow, so videos will still be some time in coming. In the meantime, here is the latest update of our adventures....

Our second day began with a trip to San Jose, which we now know the way to! This 40 minute drive gave us more of a chance to get to know the car that will hopefully take us the 5000 miles between here and the Atlantic Coast. As you can see from the picture, it would be considered a monster in Britain, but here there are plenty of cars/trucks bigger than it on the road, and it can be easily forgotten that you're driving such a big machine. It is very comfortable and I think we've now figured out how to work all the features we'll need. Some fancy things it has : Cruise Control, a camera on the back that feeds a picture to the rearview mirror when you are in reverse, a facility to override the automatic gear box and go back to good old manual, a fuel economy setting and a direct link from the iPod to the stereo system, so no need for the sometimes crackly and tempramental iTrip.

In San Jose we visited the world's biggest Monopoly board and a giant mall to buy some clothes and stock up on toiletries and trip essentials, such as a cool bag, which seemed to be a foreign concept to most Americans we spoke to. Perhaps they all have fridges in their cars?

After San Jose we headed off down the beautiful Pacific Coast Highway, which was amazing. On one side of the road are the most gorgeous beaches, with the clear waters of the Pacific crashing onto the rocks, while on the other is lush green forest or farmland. Every corner seemed to bring a view more spectacular than the last, although driving in the clifftop forest section was quite tiring with all the twists and turns.

Tomorrow we have more of the same before arriving in Los Angeles.

San Francisco

This is Fiona reporting from our first day. We have had a wonderful first day here in San Francisco. It started with the traditional breakfast of pancakes and french toast at an american diner - which kept us going until 4.


We then attempted a walking tour we had dowloaded as a podcast but it was not very good, so we headed off under our own steam to Union Square.
This was followed by a wander through Chinatown.















We hung on to the sides as we took a tram ride down the very undulating roads of San Francisco. There is a video of that that we will upload when we get faster wifi.

We wandered around Fishermans Wharf, where there are lots of street performers, and the Americans go mad for the statue performers - even though they are not very good! No wonder so many of them pitch up in Edinburgh during the fringe.

We took a boat trip to Alcatraz, which has a very interesting history as a fort then a prison. They provided an introductory video and then free audio guide which was peppered with interviews with past inmates which made it very interesting










There were fantastic views of the bay and Golden Gate Bridge. Again, more photos will follow with faster wifi.


After escaping from Alcatraz, we returned to Fishermans Wharf for clam chowder in a sour dough bread bowl. We had a slight hiccup in the otherwise perfect plan (can you tell who organised today!) when the second tram line was closed as a tram had broken down on the line. This added extra walking to our already very tired feet. Then when we got to the other line the queue was around the block - so we got a taxi to Alamo Square which was a picturesque example of the old style houses in San Francisco.

We've all been planning out a route we're (hopefully) gonna take real soon...