Month: June 2009

Well they don’t call it Death Valley for nothing! It was 115 degrees F (that’s 46 degrees C) as we drove across and they won’t let you have the air con on for the whole way. We drank 2.5 gallons of water between us on the way across this… We’ve been in Vegas for 2 nights now (actually halfway through the 3rd, it’s 2.30am here!) and I have to say I’m not entirely sure what all the fuss is about… It’s a bit too loud, vulgar and money-grabbing for me. Having said that, I did enjoy the Big Shot ride…

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From San Francisco we went up to the giant Redwoods, which were awesome (not in an American accent!) – so tall and dead straight. We drove through a tree – random! It was so peaceful wandering through the forest and the air is incredibly clean – I can almost(!) see why people want to camp up there… After that we went down to Yosemite and spent a day in the park (we wanted to stay overnight, but all the hotels and cabins in the park were fully booked) – maybe we’ll go back in an RV with the kids one…

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On Sunday we took a wander round SoMa (South of Market St) and ate some scrummy Moroccan food in Yerba Buena gardens before taking the Streetcar up the “Embarkadero” to Fisherman’s Wharf where we caught the ferry to Alcatraz. We did the audio tour, where you walk around with a headset on and listen to ex-prisoners and guards talking about life on The Rock. We learnt all about the escape attempts and had a demonstration of the “Sounds of the Slammer” – the cell doors opening and shutting, which is really loud and a bit scary (prisoners trying to leave…

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We’re staying at the Golden Gate hotel (we rate it 10 out of 10!), which has a resident cat called Pip (she popped into our room this morning through the window to say hello) and a dog called Cookie – both very cute and friendly. The manager/host Hellim recommended a Chinese restaurant (The House of NanKing) to us on our first night and it was packed with locals and the food was delicious (we would have rated it 10 out of 10, but they put sugar in the jasmine tea, so it gets a 9 out of 10 from us)……

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We’ve been on the road for a couple of days, heading up Highway 1 to San Francisco… We stayed in Monterey on Thursday night and played mini-golf (US for crazy golf) – 18 holes in black light with all the obstacles and balls glowing up in the dark. I started well (beginners luck/fluke), but then Ise got a couple of hole-in-ones and rapidly over-took me and Kit to win 7 under par! Yesterday we stopped off at Santa Cruz (a little seaside town, where the Lost Boys was filmed) and had a wander around the amusement park. It was so…

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Yesterday we went to Six Flags Magic Mountain which was loads of fun :o) We were there for over 8 hours and still didn’t have time to try all the rides! X2 was our favourite ride (we rate 9 out of 10 – it was over too quickly!) and worth the almost 2 hour queue! Here’s a virtual ride on X2 to give you some idea of what it’s like. What you can’t tell from this video is that they played Metallica right into your ears through speakers in the head rest and there were huge jets of fire on…

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We’re here! Landed at 1pm yesterday and Kit met us (on time!) from LAX. We’ve checked into the Seashore Motel (we rate it 7/10) and had a tasty dinner last night on 3rd Street (corner of Santa Monica Boulevard) – think it was called Tavola… 3 courses for $25 and they were all delicious and enormous (we rate it 8/10)! Mooched round the shops for a bit, then headed home for an early night. Today we’ve been to Venice beach, as the weather forecast had got it totally wrong (they’d predicted rain) and the sun was blazing. Walked all along…

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