Little boxes on the hillside....

Hi everyone….well one more day to go – this time tomorrow we’ll be heading to the airport here in San Francisco and getting ready to fly home – shame we can’t just say ‘beam me up Scotty’!

Today we headed in on the BART transit system (train underground and above ground). It’s very quick and clean and the chap at the info desk at the San Bruno station was very helpful and put us in the right direction.  We exited BART at Powell Street in the center of San Francisco – along with thousands of other tourists already there.  Inundated with maps from the visitor center we headed to Union Square – slightly off course – but we got there in the end – the idea was to do the hop on, hop off bus tour – we did it in an old tram – great  - but who ever tells you that it’s summer in San Francisco – take a sweater.  Man of man was it cold, windy – freezing!  The bus/tram was open air, but even people on the street were wearing sweaters.  I believe Mark Twain said something along the lines that the coldest winter he ever had was a summer in San Francisco! 

A hilly city it reminds me of the song  - Little boxes on the hill side – they’re all pastel and really pretty – long and thin and at least 2-3 stories high.  Interestingly I didn’t realise that in fact many of them are 2 or 3 residences in one – they have 2-3 front doors and people have one level each. 

The city has many cultures – Italian, Chinese to name a few and thus China town – actually there are now 3 china towns as the 1^st is about 6 square blocks and has about 33,000 people.  The streets are crowded, just like a Hong Kong market.  Then there’s Little Italy where many of the Italians settled in the past.  Now it’s cafes and food places.  The down town area – Pier 39 – Fisherman’s Wharf is so different from how I remember it 30 years ago (LOL aren’t we all different?)  Anyway back then I remember vendors selling little containers of seafood to eat, now it’s all cafes, food vendors, tourist shops – and people everywhere. 

Our tour bus took us for about 1 ½ ride right through south area, plus to the side of the Golden Gate Bridge, we could have transferred to another bus and gone over but honestly we were just so cold.  What we did see by the bridge though was the Team NZ boat out practicing for the Americas Cup so we were thrilled with that.

The little boxes - this shows the multiple front doors for the same building - i.e. this makes it 2 houses in one.

This was a 3 door front door 

Unfortunatley not the best shot of the Golden Gate Bridge - but couldn't get closer

Alcatraz, this is zoomed in, but it is actually really quite close to the city/mainland

City hall, the original was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake.

Around Union square and Powell Street etc, I really loved the old buildings and was impressed that the leaders of the city have preserved the old buildings and not pulled them down and built high risers.  There are all the top stores, Macys,  Nordstrom, Bloomingdales, Sacks 5^th Ave – we were actually cheeky and went in there to use their toilet! 

An observation – women in SF dress really nicely – some of the better dressed people I’ve seen on our journey – even the tourist women dressed well. 

Back to our hotel and to repack our bags, sitting on them to get them shut!

Thanks to everyone for joining our journey through this big country.  America you can be proud.  Everyone has been so nice to us, helped us if we were lost, and took an interest in where we came from.  Of particular was the lovely lady in the Route 66 Park Visitor Centre outside St Louis and also the Park Ranger chap there too.  They really made our day.  Thank you.

To our friends and family, Denise, Patti and Jim, Chris and Cindy and family, Kelli and family. Thank you for your generosity of time and your kindness.  Truly appreciated.

So here we go back to reality – dishes, housework and back to work  - so we can save up for another trip!

Happy travels everyone - watch this space - Florida to Alaska?  

Jane and Neil

Lured by the smell of the Pacific

Hi everyone,
Well, here we are back on the west coast again and only a jump across the pacific to get home.  A home we hear has been shaking again - hope everyone is safe.  We drove from Elk Grove (near Sacramento) today and as we cruised down the freeway, i realised the difference 6 weeks makes of traveling.  Am much calmer now on the freeway, though Americans do need to slow down and indicate better, everything is about time here and they race everywhere.  The lushness we had in Yosemite and the productive lands of Ripon (Calif) have given away completely to the dry grasslands with little growing.  Oleanders line the freeway and i  have fallen in love with the crepe myrtle trees that lined the streets of Elk Grove.  So pretty.
We even drove passed quite a bit of scorched land that had been recently hit by the fires, even the wind farms that dot the landscape weren't protected from the rampant fires.  A few of them were completely melted or at least scorched.
The hotels and motels near the airport surely do have you hooked, as we found their prices quite considerably higher than elsewhere we've stayed.  However, we've booked ourselves into a Comfort Inn for 2 nights and hope to at least get a late check out so we can be fresh before we board our flight home.  12 hours flying, 2 movies and 2 meals and a short snooze and hey presto we'll be home.
This afternoon we spent a bit of time at one of SF's big malls The Tanforan Mall - with 2 department stores attached, plus other big stores and a huge food hall.  
Tomorrow we go into SF city and do a bit of touring around.


One last post to go.
Thank you for joining us on our journey, it's been lovely to know you're here.

Jane and Neil

WINDING DOWN

Hi everyone
We're back in California and staying at my cousins in Elk Grove which is just below Sacramento.  The weather is hot,99degF but the interesting thing is in San Francisco it's only 65F  not much warmer than home!  Today we went with the family to an Indian Cassino about 40 minutes drive from here where they have this HUGE  (yes huge again) buffet for about $11.95 - it has so much variety - Asian, Italian, Mexican, American.  Fruit, deserts - just everything.  We walked through about 10.30 a.m. and the cassino was quite busy but an hour or so later it was REALLY BUSY.  Apparently a lot of the Asian gamblers are bussed in.   Casinos in California are owned by Indian tribes, as gambling is illegal, and they are the only ones allowed to operate cassinos.
After brunch we stopped at some stores - tools, furniture etc, picked up Neil's new glasses - $280.00 for new glasses which at home would have cost about $700.00!
Back at my cousins we sad by the pool, enjoying the heat  - until it got too hot.  THe meat is on the bbq being smoked for dinner and it's just a nice relaxing time after so many hours and days traveling and then trying to remember where we've been and what we have seen.
A few observations.
It was lovely when we arrived back in California to see food growing again after days spent in New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona.  Made me realize how much i had missed seeing food growing.  We've even seen a few cows and sheep - just like home!
Food is cheap even though Americans are complaining about the increase in prices and especially gas prices.  Chicken breasts about $2-3.00 lb - - we pay about $5.00 minimum a lb.
Gasoline is $3.50 or there abouts a gallon - cheap by our standards.  We can fill up the car (a dodge) for about 50-60 $ - would be double that at home and probably more.
Variety here is certainly the spice of life.  Have LOVED shopping. So much to choose from,especially clothes and food.  Building products from stores like Home Depot/Lowes - are only a 1/4 or 1/3 of what we pay. But i guess the upside for NZ is that we only have 4million people so we don't have the crowds!
Neil has his car parts which we brought yesterday from Sacramento Ford -a tad heavy so i think we're going to need another suitcase.  I've been back to the Outlet Mall today!

No photos today unfotunately.

See you all tomorrow, only a few days left.

Jane and Neil

And...oh what a day...

hi everyone,

Yep 2 posts today...lucky you LOL  (sorry having photo size problems, some loading good, other HUGE)  BUT.....

Oh what a day!

Not the best of days.

We left Vegas only to realise we needed gas and we had already headed out into the desert.  Neil was unfazed I on the other hand was in full panic mode. However we got some gas at Indian Springs and headed through the desert lands for hours and hours.  We were on our way to Yosemite, with the intention of seeing the waterfalls there, one is meant to be the 4^th biggest in the world.

Before we entered the park we stopped at the visitor centre at Mono Lake, asking questions. And yes, you guessed right this is where things began to go downhill.

You pay once you enter the park - $20.00 per car.  The info guy said it was well sign posted – not.  Te info guy said you can see the waterfalls from the road – no no no!

IT was beautiful in there.  Large boulders with trees basically growing out of them.   Then it changed to forest and then to massive bare rocks towering skyward.  A waterfall?  Nope.

The signage in the park was useless.  The park is a through road in that it has multiple exits, but nothing said waterfall and when we found the Yosemite village the information office was closed.  The place was loaded with cars, people etc, and apparently you had to take a shuttle bus to see the waterfalls.  We weren’t told this. Also that there is quite a walk – again we weren’t told about this.  So zero marks for Yosemite sadly.  We’ve been to lots of national parks in our journey this time and everything has always been great.  Sadly Yosemite bombed out.  The scenery was excellent, but the information and the reality was the opposite.  I decided that on the way out I would make a complaint and at the exit of the park – some 30 minutes of driving later – I met up with a park ranger and she was quite upset that we had such a bad experience. 

It got a tad worse.  We had to drive for an hour to get out of the park /forest area and drive one horrendous switch back road – scary – then we couldn’t find any accommodation – where were all the motels like  the rest of our stay?  Oh well, we finally made it to Ripon – near Merced?  And we’re in a lovely motel, with lovely staff and have had a great dinner at Carls Jr – a fast food place, but very delicious salad and Neil had a burger with ‘real’ meat!

So a nice end to an ‘oh what a day’.

Oh what a night!

Hi everyone

Sorry we missed a blog day but this will tell you why.

The Bee Gees didn’t happen.  We went with my cousins to go to our free breakfast only to find out it was all a bit of a con, not the bee gee tickets, but the whole thing was a time share sales pitch.  Well i told them forget it, i'm on holiday and didn't want to spend 3 hours listening to them.  So i asked for our money back and got it.  They were we felt quite sneaky at how they go about it and we told them so.

However,  with the Bee Gees off...we had an evening to fill and Marie Osmond fit the bill.  The day before i had heard that the were on show - i had done research before we left NZ and thought they were absent for july - not so - yay.  It’s meant to be the Donny and Marie show, but he was recovering from surgery, so it was a solo show, though one of the older Osmonds  Meril appeared.  But my goodness what a show.  Professional, awesome, wonderful, fabulous are just a few of the words to describe it.  Okay so we all remember the cheesy Donny and Marie show of years ago, but by goodness this woman has an awesome talent.  She sings right across the board from country to rock, and Broadway musicals and she even sang some opera from Madame Butterfly.  When she started the opera I thought at first it might be one of her jokes, she is a really funny lady, but no, it was her and live - none of the lip sync stuff - and my god she’s truly fabulous. 

I went to the show with my cousin Cindy and we had gone to the ticket office earlier in the am. To book our tickets.  We paid a bit extra and glad we did.  The show room was like an intimate setting and we were at a table right up front just about.  Couldn’t have been better.

After the show Neil and Chris met us and we headed to the water show at the Bellagio.  It goes to the sequence of music and over a 100 spouts of water fire up like a geyser to the music.  There are apparently 9 different sequences and they ‘fire’ up at night every 15 minutes or so.  Then we hoofed it down to the Mirage casino where they have fire spectacular of a ‘volcano’ going off.  All very theatrical.

This was about 9.30/10pm and the streets were packed.  There are people here from all over the globe and the surprising thing is there are heaps of families having holidays.  One doesn’t think of Vegas as a family holiday location, but apparently that is one of the reasons they built the casino buildings in such a theatrical and fantasy style, reminiscent I suppose of Disneyland, it certainly gives the city another dimension. Sorry the photos aren't the best.

And when I said above we hoofed it, man did we walk yesterday – miles and miles and it is soooo hot.  There are walkway bridges across the streets – you go up’/down very steep escalators to reach them.  It’s the only way to cross the main strip because of the busy vehicle traffic.

And my poor hoofs – oh so sore.  So need a foot massage.

And talking about escalators!  About 10pm we headed back towards our hotel – the Luxor (the Pyramid one)  We had a 24 hour ticket for the tram which goes the length of the strip and has about 7 stations.  We had to go from Harrahs to the MGM and then would walk from the MGM through the New York New York, The Excalibur and then to the Luxor.  Well we were just going down the escalator from the tram at the MGM when the hem of my maxi dress got caught in the tread of the escalator.  I could free it, screamed for help as we reached the bottom.  Everyone was yanking at it, screaming and I threw myself to the ground trying to get free, but my feet were caught up in the dress.  Neil and another guy slammed repeatedly at the stop button but it didn’t work until after about 5 hits (it’s meant to work 1^st time!) 

I went into shock and couldn’t move.  Security and hotel paramedics were called and eventually the ambulance.  What a fiasco.  They asked if I wanted to go to hospital, but refused but was a tad shaky getting up – this is about a half hour later!  Hotel big wigs were there recording the incident – probably worried I’d ‘sue their arse off’ LOL.  A cheese burger and do you want fries with that later I was sooo over ready for bed. 

This morning I’m achy after having a rough night.  But nothing broken, just a tad shocked.  It was rather scary as I couldn’t get free and my dress was being dragged more and more under the escalator.  The poor thing is ruined. 

Hi everyone,

Have arrived in a very very hot Las Vegas, 107F.

We left Kingman yesterday and took route 66 west.  The guy at the info centre said the road is very twisty/quite high up and narrow in parts.  Heck we come from NZ, we are used to NZ roads, we can do this.    It was exactly as he said and I must admit I was a tad wary at times.  The landscape was very rugged, we even saw wild deer on the roadside.  I did also notice two different types of vegetation.  A palm type tree I’ve not seen before. Then there was this scrubby bush that looked like it had fuzzy green cotton wool on it.

We arrived at the town of Oatman just as the ‘cowboys’ were staging their shoot out and were waved through – we drove through surrounded by the wandering donkeys – so cute.  But when we parked and walked back to the ‘show’ cute turned to a tad stinky with donkey poo on the streets.  However we watched the shoot out, patted the donkeys and wandered around this small town – another which is trying to survive after being bypassed when the freeway went in.

Next town on the route was Bullhead right down by the Colorado river – this was a rather a nice town, but no specific centre,  instead it stretched out along the river and kind of joined up with Laughlin which has casinos on the other side of the river – the Nevada side.  One casino was built in the style of a paddle steamer – it was huge.  I liked both these towns. 

Instead of driving straight to Vegas we headed up through the Hoover Dam.  This was the third time I have been to the Dam.  When we were here four years ago the new bridge was not quite complete.  It is now.  It was very busy. You drive over the bridge and then park.  You can walk over the dam – the water was quite low – but again the engineering really is impressive.  There is also a museum (surprise!) and food/tourist shop (surprise!) built into the rock face. 

Then it was on to Vegas.

Oh boy is it hot…

We found parking in the self-parking and had to walk into the casino from the back – just about melted before we got inside.  Check in – well…unfortunately not impressed. We waited and waited... the queue very long and after we arrived it got worse – felt sorry for those behind us.  We were surprised at the inefficiency of this because for the most part we’ve found America to be very efficient.  Not all the desks were open, and then when one closed a desk, it stayed closed, we would have thought someone would have stepped into the wings and kept it open to keep processing the waiting guests.  Oh well.

Anyway, we’re in our room in the Luxor – the hotel like a pyramid. Unfortunately only a view of the building next door.  The lobby is huge – about 4 x football fields, and there are 4400 rooms in the hotel.  Huge huge huge.  Hard to find your way around when it’s that big

We waited until about 8 pm to go out and walk around –thought it would be cooler – not.  Apparently it doesn’t get cooler until about 2pm!  The streets (like last time we were here) were so busy – people walking everywhere.  One thing I noticed is that the pimps were here, but not as prolific as when we visited last time.  They still proffer there little postcards of women to rent –lovely!  Last time those cards littered the pavement.  Didn’t see that so much this time. 

Another thing I noticed was that Americans seem to bring their family to Vegas – I mean children.  While I get it for the spectacular of the buildings – it’s like some sort of fantasyland, I kind of wonder about having them around the sleaze and seeing the gambling up front and personal. 

Oh… another thing – we got ‘accosted’ a we entered – even before we had registered and we got 4 tickets for the Bee Gees show and a free breakfast – for $50.00.  I would in some ways beware of these hotel ‘offers’ .  They take you by surprise and it’s hard to get out of and you’ve just arrived and really don’t know what is a deal or not.

Anyway, we’re here, and my cousins are arriving from Sacramento today.

See you back here tomorrow.

Jane and Neil

  ps - more photos of vegas to come

Standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona...(la la la la )

What an interesting day.

Before we left Holbrook we went to the Tee Pee Motel – about 10 motels in the shape of teepees and there a stack of old cars parked outside.  Neil was in heaven.

We left Holbrook and headed to Winslow, Arizona – yes of the Eagles – Standing on the corner in Winslow Arizona fame – and we stood on that corner too!  Quite a pretty town when you get into it.  Was talking to a shop owner who moved there about 4 years ago and she said the town  has really improved in the last couple of years, trying to build it up.  I wish that sadly could be said the same for the residential areas that we drove through.  As Neil put it there seems to be a lot of projects!  A rubbish bin would help.  As a visitor here, I really didn’t want to ‘go on’ about this, but since we’ve left Oklahoma the small towns have looked so neglected and it’s really upset me.  It’s very sad.

The Wigwam  Motel 

The route 66 from Holbrook to Winslow is kinda non-existent so we were on the freeway.  Landscape rugged and dry

From Winslow however we were able to stay on the ‘mother road’ going thru tiny towns until we arrived at the Meteor Crater – this is a huge hole in the ground- caused by a meteor hitting earth about 50 thousand years ago – it’s 2 ½ miles in circumference and can hold the down town of San Francisco it’s so big.    Neil went on a guided walk up to the rim while I watched a couple of movies about it, then when he came back we went out to the viewing platform.  It really is awesome and apparently only a pimple compared to the size of the meteor that hit earth that caused the dinosaurs to become extinct!

The meteor crater - really this doesn't do it justice - its HUGE

Imagine the entire of downtown San Francisco being able t fit into this!

Next on the travel agenda was Flagstaff – the gateway to the Grand Canyon.  However, we’ve both been before (I’ve been twice) so we missed it this time. Driving through the historic area of the city we came to a farmers market – all health food and real fresh food!  Nice!

After Flagstaff we had to go back onto the freeway – and we had rain!  Quite heavy too.  Those big black/purple clouds really have followed us all afternoon.

We stopped at Williams a small town where you can take the train up to the Grand Canyon.  It’s really thriving, lots of cafes/shops, route 66 stuff – and we had some rain. 

In Williams Arizona

Route 66 is great from here on.  A good quality road.  Small towns, rugged landscape.    We stopped at Seligman which was featured in the Billy Connolly programme on Route 66.  Really commercial in a tacky kind of way and again I go back to the tidy/cleaning up of the townships.  No use trying to have businesses if the rest lets you down.  Sorry but this has been one thing that has been constant these last few days. 

The rain was off and on as we traversed more of 66.  We didn’t stop off anywhere except outside Hackberry – where there is this great garage with lots of old cars, memorabilia.  While it was shabby it was really quite neat.  We actually drove passed and quickly turned round to come back  - glad we did.

We’ve arrived at Kingman – in rain – I can’t believe this is the 3^rd time I’ve been to this city – the first time in 1979!

Anyway, we’ve bunked down for the night and have yet to decide what happens tomorrow.

See you tomorrow

Jane and Neil