The wheels just touched down and we're taxi-ing to the terminal now at Heathrow. We've been travelling since 0830am America time so it's effectively 2am for us now.
The flights felt quite long as the first five and a half hour one involved no TVs or film of any kind - what did we all used to do? The second, not too bad, but I didn't manage any sleep. Em managed a couple of hours - we'll be tired by the end of today.
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Just got through passport control. Used my new e-passport and there was no queue for me. It worked and I was straight through. Just waiting for Em now! She's in the snail trail.
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All in all we've had an amazing time, and I hope you've all enjoyed reading about it. We're glad to have shared it with you.
Sunday, 19 August 2012
Saturday, 18 August 2012
Checking Out
It's 8:10am on Saturday 18th August and after a continental breakfast of champions we're checking out and getting the motel minibus to the airport. Let's hope it's all plain sailing ahead.
All-aboard.
Farewell LA.
All-aboard.
Farewell LA.
End of Days
We're driving the last one hundred miles to Hell-A and the weather is cloudy but nearly 90 degrees (about 27 centigrade). The scenery is less good than yesterday, but still interesting countryside. Sunburnt yellow sweeping hills meet and criss cross each other, peppered with brown shrubs and green trees that give a good contrast with the blue and white sky.
After faffing with bags etc at the motel we ended up leaving late at 9am, and are now starting to feel the pangs of hunger (it's 10am now). Must stop for food soon.
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It's about 7pm now. We arrived in LA about 1pm at the travel lodge. Here we dumped the bags, creamed up, and lay by the pool until 6pm. It was so hot and sunny: perfect weather to savour the last relaxing daylight hours of the holiday. The pool itself was pretty nice, and the dense planting around the outside area gave a nice peaceful feel. What gives a less peaceful feel is the planes taking off every fifteen minutes or so - did I mention we're only two miles from LAX? It didn't bother us though.
Oh, and when we did stop for breakfast earlier, it soon became brunch. We both had a sixteen inch breakfast baguette each - so unbelievably filling. Finishing Emily's was a mistake - felt like we were going to burst.
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We're now at the 'Daily Grill', a nice restaurant only minutes away from the motel. We've just had the meals delivered - huge! Mine has a whole broccoli as the veg!
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After the mains and a chocolate brownie pudding drizzled in caramel, pecans & ice cream we waddled back to the hotel. Then we set out to get a photo of the huge doughnut on Randy's Doughnuts and to return the car. It was a sad moment as they drove the Mustang away. We'd done 60 miles short of 3000 miles in it. It desperately needed a wash. The inside was pretty clean though due to general 'good housekeeping'.
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We're now back at the motel and packed ready to go. Let's hope we have a safe plain old journey ahead of us.
Friday, 17 August 2012
The Big Sur, the Mustang Convoy, Serious Wood, and Santa Barb
This was the dream: heading across to get to Highway 1 and driving that all the way down the coast to Santa Barbara.
We had to stop for breakfast quite early on, in a quaint little place named Carmel, near where Highway 1 begins. Here we went to a fantastic little English style coffee shop / bakery located in a rather posh plaza. We had a ham and cheese croissant each with a coffee and tea then briefly wandered the plaza looking at some very nice boutiques and galleries.
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Well, highway 1 was a serious treat. The vistas: amazing; it was a drive of dreams. The windy black tarmac road is forged through the jagged and rocky cliff edges, which descend to meet sandy beaches. The azure blue ocean was crashing and foaming around shoals and rocks by the beach and lapping the shores. The sky was crisp blue and set off against the hills above us.
The highway continually snakes around the cliff edge and there are some serious corners which tested all the horses. In the words of Blue, it was 'system up with the top down'. I don't think the m3 will quite live up to it when we get back to Blighty.
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As it was the final big drive of our honeymoon, hundreds of well wishers had gathered along Highway 1. They cheered us on and took photos as we passed. I don't think it was anything to do with the classic car in front of us, or indeed the hundreds of classic cars that were driving Highway 1 that day (including old Ferraris and so many other classics)...
Yes, what a day to be driving down Highway 1. The air was crisp and cool, the sun was out, and the jet black tarmac warmed while the roar of mighty engines passed. The classic cars only added to the atmosphere and it was a real treat.
For a portion of the drive we were joined by three other Mustangs and drove in a Mustang convoy down the coast. This was only marred when some audacious son of a gun overtook us in some kind of car which I can only describe as Ford's answer to the Megane. The convoy broken, the dream in tatters, we left the road for lunch.
Here, roughly half way between San Fran and Hell-A we visited a little Mexican restaurant and had a good bite to eat. The cherry on the top of the day though was discovering an artisan who made the most spectacular wooden furniture I've ever seen: Brook Lawrence (Design). If only we'd had a spare $3000 we could have bought the most expertly crafted walnut table we've ever seen. Magical stuff. Try looking him up online, although I expect the photos on the website will pale grossly in comparison to the products in his gallery. The woods used included Cedar, Cypress, Walnut and Redwood. It was like nothing I've ever seen in England. Anyway, we chewed the cud for a while with him, mostly with me asking lots of questions about various pieces. Then we hit the road again for the two hours more drive to Santa Barbara.
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We arrived in SB and our motel was pleasant being only one block from the beach. Not wanting to waste the last of a nice day, we dropped our stuff in the room and made a beeline for the pool. Cool refreshing water and the last of the direct sun made it blissful. We used the motel WiFi to research our evening eatery.
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After a shower and change we route marched along the sea front heading into a glowing orange sunset. Palm trees lined up & down the sides of the road offered mighty silhouettes against the stunning backdrop.
After our quick step we arrived at the restaurant 'Emilios', only to find that it was closed for a kitchen refit. We had to settle in the end for a less good local restaurant and bar with reasonable food & cocktails, but the slowest service known to America.
We wandered back to the motel and crashed into bed again, to be ready for another early ish drive from here to Hell-A for the final night's stay.
It was a day of marked atmosphere.
Muir Woods
Once on the road we headed straight to Muir woods. This involved the drive over the Golden Gate bridge - we were in awe. Such an amazing bridge and what an engineering achievement considering when it was built. Each of the steel cables is about 924mm thick and comprises about 27000 individual steel cables! Some feat.
Muir woods houses some of the oldest and tallest trees of their kind in the world. Most of it is Douglas fir and red cedar I think. The sheer canopy height blows you away. No photo I've seen can do it justice - you have to see it for yourself. When your under the canopy you feel a world away from San Fran. It's quiet, but not only that - it feels peaceful, serene and relaxing. While you wander through, the heavy scent of pine is pungent and the shaded scene has rays of light piercing it where the canopy breaks occur.
A fresh lunch later (had at Muir woods), we hit the road again, headed for Salinas - about 3 hours drive from San Fran.
When we arrived at Salinas we discovered it to be a bit of a middle of nowhere town (apologies to any residents who know the true Salinas). There seemed to be nothing there really. However it was the home of John Steinbeck, so there must be something there that's inspirational at least. Our motel was near an industrial plant with a busy road, but we knew this when we booked, and it didn't bother us.
We lounged by the pool for about half an hour and steamed in the melting hot Jacuzzi whilst scouring trip advisor for the filet mignon of restaurants here. Up trumps came a local sushi place, only a mile walk - perfect so we could both let our hair down and have a drink or two...
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The sushi at this restaurant Kokoro - out of this world. There were four pages of special sushi rolls and the selection was incredible. The quality and variety combined was the best we've ever had. Totally amazing. And, the value for money was yet again, amazing. The whole meal came to $50 + tip. I only hope they don't increase their prices massively in the future and become as unreasonable as Yo!
We left there very much sated and walked back to the motel to hit the hay. A good day.
Thursday, 16 August 2012
Welcome to The Rock!
For lunch we ate at Boudin - the sourdough factory. It very much reminded us of Prague as we had the soup in a bowl made of bread. Needless to say, my plate was stripped bare.
After lunch we walked towards the Golden Gate bridge, eventually catching a bus which should have come with a free neck support; the driver had a thirsty right foot.
I haven't mentioned yet, but the weather in San Fran was foggy and pretty depressing. It was cold! The golden gate bridge was shrouded in fog and so the iconic cliche photo was never going to be. However, we walked along the bridge and sucked up the atmosphere - it was great.
We took a long walk in order to get a bus - by now our feet were tired from almost fifteen miles of walking throughout the day. The bus took us moments away from our hotel and then we headed to Westfield to grab a bite. Here we had such cheap sushi - awesome value. The whole meal was about $25 and we were full. This included quite a lot of sushi, Edamami beans and miso soup.
We retired after this to plan the next night's stay in our current 'boutique' hotel room. We finalised on the 'Good Nite Inn' in Salinas, just outside Monterey, CA.
Wednesday, 15 August 2012
On the Road Again - with Beer and Candy
Just before 2pm we arrived at the Budweiser brewery ready for the tour. By this point we were pretty hungry with empty stomachs, but had not had time to get lunch for fear of being late -they only run two tours per day. The tour started with two free drinks of your choice while you watched a video. I chose some kind of raspberry flavoured number they do which is 8.5%. Em chose a bud lime - a bit like Corona with lime. Em was driving so didn't even finish her first. I put away two and then when the videos finished we glided round the parts of the factory that tourists are allowed close to. One of these areas was the huge kegs they brew the beer in - I think each one is 22000 gallons from memory. I think she also said that if you drank a case of 24 beers a day it would still take you 68 years to get through a keg of this size!
We left the brewery and headed literally round the corner to the Jelly Belly factory - by this point we were starving, although in our forty minute tour we managed to tie ourselves over with three jelly beans...
Finally we managed to get a semi unMcsatisfying lunch at about 4pm. We there found out an interesting fact - that McDonalds Milkshakes have more calories than the burgers. My Big Mac was 540 calories, yet the Milkshake...710 (medium size). In our one 'meal' we'd managed 100% of our fat for the day. Free refill anyone?
We left our McLunch and headed the last hour of the journey into San Fran -however we stopped at the North Face outlet store en route. This is so cheap compared to the US normal stock - and the US normal stock is so much cheaper than the UK stuff. You can pretty much exchange dollars for pounds on the standard price tags (before they get marked down for outlet store). Our visit was also a useful way of avoiding rush hour traffic in San Fran.
We finally arrived in San Fran at 7:30pm and preceded to spend one whole hour and about 10 dollars of gas just driving round looking for overnight parking at a reasonable rate - by reasonable I mean under 30 dollars! We drove many times round and only getting 8.5mpg! The sat nav took some wrestling as quite a few roads it wanted us to go down were blocked off.
In the end, we had no better options than to pay for valet parking at our hotel. The nightly price is $33 + 15.5% tax! Consequently we'll have to be on a diet of bread and water, while the car gets a warm blanket and a roof over its hood.
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Now fed and watered we have showered and are feeling more relaxed back at the hotel. This is good practice for alcatraz tomorrow, as our room is not much larger than cell sized and we have shared toilet and bathroom facilities, lol. We ate dinner at 'Little Delhi'. It was one of the best lamb kormas we've ever had!
Now, time for bed. We rise at 7:30am to get breakfast and get across to Alcatraz.
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