Fly away on my Zephyr

We Brits often think that travelling our great land can be a big hassle. Balls it does! You can drive from one end of England to the other, and then back again in a day (you’d be a bit knackered but you could do it). Over here you can’t, so we took a train from SF to Chicago – the California Zephyr. The 2000 mile journey across 7 states was due to take just over 2 days, although various delays meant it lasted about 60 hours. The journey was very cool though, we got to see some amazing scenery through Nevada, Utah & Colorado, including the Sierra Nevadas, Rocky Mountains & Colorado River. Our crazy waiter, Red, in the dining car insisted on serenading us with the same song, something to do with “baby don’t cry, love is here”. We had a cosy little room in the sleeper carriage and playing cards whilst the mid-west ranges drifted by actually made time fly.


We only got a handful of photos but check out this ghosty pic from Reno train station.

We didn't actually go to any kind of disco, but...

After the hecticness of Vegas it was back to Hayward for a bit of wind down time and sleep, so much so that Jamie and I didn’t even get up to listen to the Gills. Saturday was spent preparing for J&L’s dinner party that evening, prompting expectations of a Hyacinth style “Candlelight Supper”. Jamie slaved away for several hours in the kitchen but the resulting Coq-Au-Vin was pretty damn good. There was also some excellent cheese dip in a bread bowl thing, peanut butter mousse cake and brownies for pudding. It was also nice to see some of Lilly’s friends again & for Tash to meet them, and a good evening was had by one and all. After this, our time in Hayward was drawing to a close, so we must say a huge thank you to Jamie & Lilly for letting us stay with them for so long, we really enjoyed ourselves. Thank you for introducing us to the delights of Carl's Jnr and sorry for all my ridiculous sneezing & hammering of your tea-bag stash.

Next we moved on to San Francisco city centre and also to our first hostel experience for this trip. Luckily, we had a private room in an annex building so at least we got a bit of privacy and a nice view of the Trans America Pyramid. Despite being in a part of town full of strip joints the neighbourhood was pretty fun, close to Chinatown (which didn’t smell half as bad as Hong Kong) and certainly nothing like The Cross back in Sydney. The only downside was it was pretty noisy and so neither of us have slept much in the last week.

To compound our sleep deprivation, the next day we were up at 5 to go on a day trip to Yosemite. As it’s been a while since we’ve banged on about scenery and how it can’t get any better, I can say this – Yosemite National Park in the “fall” is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I don’t want to detract from everything else we’ve seen, especially all the wonders of New Zealand, but Yosemite was stunning. It was amazing to see these glacial valleys and broken hunks of mountain covered in autumnal colours, dotted with evergreens and a slight dusting of snow. There were some pretty cool waterfalls that had just started picking up the first drops of melting snow, a few coyotes, bears & deer and the beautiful sound of tiny streams trickling in the distance. Unfortunately there were no miniature cowboys with orange moustaches jumping around angrily & shooting guns.


As I’ve been to San Francisco before I guess Tash should really be giving you her views, but as Tash is working hard on her college project it’s li’l ol’ me a hoggin’ the bloggin’. It’s hard to describe the feel of SF as it’s such a laid back city, which was difficult to experience as we rushed about for 3 days cramming in as much as possible.

Market area – we did the usual tourist thing of going round the shops for a bit, although I couldn’t find where the “Aaron Leevert” suit shop was.
Cable Cars – we had a few rides on the historic cable cars that run from Market to the Wharf. This is one of the best bits of SF cos you can sit inside or outside or even hang on the side whilst cruising up & down those huge hills just taking in the scenery. One trip we were serenaded by a crazy French lady who’d given herself a crew cut and kept shouting about how much she hated California, before bursting into song again!
Fisherman’s Wharf – we ate some good soup & chilli in bread bowls at Boudin’s Sour Dough bakery, saw the sea lions at Pier 39, took in the street entertainers, including one guy dressed as a bush that was jumping out at ladies. I also showed Tash the hostel we’d stayed in before J&L’s wedding. Tash also got her first proper view of Golden Gate Bridge.


Alcatraz – the old prison island amazed both for the first & second time and once again made me want to watch The Shawshank Redemption. It’s such a dark & moody place, the bleakness of the exercise yard coupled with the frustrating view of the SF skyline gets you every time.
Golden Gate Park – too big to see in one day, so we just took a bus up through the city to take in the cool, Victorian houses everywhere (included the one used in Mrs, Doubtfire) and then had a walk around Stow Lake in the park’s middle.
Haight Ashbury – one of those places you go to say you’ve seen it. It was a lot grubbier than I remembered and reminded Tash of a shabby version of Brighton. There's still a great vibe to the area, especially when you think of its importance to music in the late 60’s. Which leads on to one of my favourite places – Amoeba, the coolest record shop I’ve ever been to (seeing as the Vinyl Experience off Tottenham Court Road is no more). Yes, I did buy but time & cash restraints limited this to only 2 cds. Seriously, that’s like putting me in a room with a crate of PG Tips but only enough hot water for one cuppa.
Mission – Another cool neighbourhood with loads going on and home to a handful of thrift stores. Pickings were slim and Stu found the only real footy shirt of the day. However we had good burritos & tamales for lunch.

Just before we left and just after Jane & Stu arrived, J&L took us to a wicked Italian restaurant. Much food & Chianti was consumed by all and I think we took more photos of the food than of each other.

As MC Hammer once said, “I’ve been around the world, from London to the Bay”, well that’s you and us now preacher man.

Desert Heat

Last week we ventured out of California to spend a couple of days in Nevada & Arizona. First stop was Las Vegas, which summoned up images of a once prime location that’s been consumed by sleaze. We were both pleasantly surprised – admittedly Vegas has it’s fair share of dodgy Mexican guys handing out fliers for lap dancing clubs and the top of the strip did look a bit grubby (in both senses of the word) but the southern end was amazing. It’s a shame that some of the famous places weren’t quite the same, such as the International where Elvis performed – it’s now been renamed and remodelled as the Hilton. Also, as we only had one day there we didn’t get a chance to find the “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign, the Rat Pack sign at the Sands and that damn neon cowboy you always see in movies with scenes set in Vegas. However we did get to see some of the most awesome hotels in the world. The attention to detail both inside and out of the main hotels is so impressive and we spent over 10 hours just looking around. Highlights included the huge Fashion Show Mall (some very cool boot shops), the lion outside the MGM Grand, the recreation of the Grand Canal UPSTAIRS inside the Venetian, the huge light beam from the Luxor, the dancing fountains at the Bellagio (in fact ALL of the Bellagio – way too posh for a couple of Medwites) and my personal favourite, Caesar’s Palace - it just oozed cool. The strip looked just as good as expected but I’m sure photos from the air would look much better than ours from the ground.


The gambling halls were all pretty similar so for we stuck to the lounges in our hotel, the Orleans, for our brief dalliance with the slot machines. There was no real success, otherwise you’d all have known about it by now, although Tash did make $20 out of her first $2. The best thing was just wandering around the halls, listening to the Hispanic rock band (very Robert Rodriquez) & jazz from the Irish bar and watching all the other people – it was astonishing to see how easily people can lose money, some of them blew a thousand dollars in under 5 minutes on the slots. There were also quite a lot of hardcore gamblers with oxygen tanks, mobility carts and big cowboy hats. Most of our male readers would have also enjoyed the waitress’s outfits. We also got to get totally stuffed at this huge, multi-cultural buffet with some of the best steak & swordfish I’ve had. There is too much to do in Vegas in one day, it would have been great to see a show (or more) so this is definitely another place to come back to.

Our next day was a 15 hour coach trip into Arizona. We left the hazy morning of Las Vegas and headed out to Lake Mead & the Hoover Dam (which incidentally is my favourite Sugar song). Unfortunately we couldn’t get any dramatic shots of the dam itself to demonstrate what a simply astonishing piece of engineering it is but I assure you that it is pretty impressive. We then got driven on across the Nevada/Arizona border, with a quick hop off at a truck stop and some snaking along part of the old Route 66, we proceeded to our main destination – The Grand Canyon. To be honest, after the wonders of New Zealand we were expecting to get to the Canyon and go “Oh, is that it?”. Again, we were very pleasantly surprised. It is impossible to describe how unreal it all looked; it was as if we were standing on a cliff edge in front of a massive painting. This is the kind of place that you could hike around for weeks and still be in awe. Every rock edge, formation, valley & peak was different, all of them layered in every shade of white, yellow, red & brown. We’d have loved to have been able to do a helicopter ride across the near 280 x 80 mile expanse of it all but sadly we only had a few hours, I can totally understand why every travel show puts this as the no. 1 place in the world to visit.

A sporting weekend

Saturday was the day of sport. Because of the 8 hours time difference, this meant Jamie & I getting up at 7am to watch the Liverpool game and catch the Gills broadcast over the net. As you can all imagine, getting up that early to listen to the Gills play like a bunch of pansies wasn’t particularly fun, but the lunacy of injury time was. Since when did the Gills mange a draw in injury time, let alone scoring 2 to win the game?! I am still maintaining my 100% listening to the Gills record.

We watched a bit more footy (nice to see Newcastle lose, hopefully Roeder will take them down before he gets the boot), then dropped Lilly off at a baby shower and went bowling with Phillip (Lil’s sister’s husband). The Moonlite Lanes in San Jose weren’t actually moon lit but there were lots of dark lighting and funky ultra-violet tubes every where. As expected, there was an abundance of shabby & generally quite jammy bowling, although taking Bowling as a games option at school did give Jamie a very convincing action. We each won a game so the spoils were shared evenly. Many thanks to Phil for entertaining us all afternoon.

Then it was onto the HP Pavilion for some hockey to see the San Jose Sharks take on the Pittsburgh Penguins. The build up to face off was awesome, not only did their mascot, Sharkie, abseil from the stadium roof onto the ice (Tommy T, take note) but the players skated into the rink amid plumes of dry ice through a giant sharks mouth that also came down from the ceiling (Gills, take note). My excitement was furthered by a massive pile up within the first 90 seconds of the game, although this did mean one of the Shark's best players, Cheechoo (he’s from Mooseville), got banned for the rest of the game. In fact for most of the 1st period neither team had a full 5+1 side on the ice. Still, the game was brilliant, some really hard checks, chanting, a disallowed goal, good tunes over the PA system, power plays (including shark mouth hand clapping), a mad rush by the Penguins at the end and a 3-2 victory for the Sharks. IMHO, ice-hockey is the best of the North American national sports.


The sports theme has continued into Sunday. Despite not getting up early enough to see the goals, I did catch the end of the Spurs v Chelsea game, and what a pleasing result it was too. We all then took part in the age old sport of devouring all the leftovers in the fridge, including lasagne, chimichangas, guacamole, black bean, onion dip, tortilla chips, salad, hotdogs, etc. Not much else to report, we’re gonna get out of J&L’s hair for a few days down in Sin City.

A New Continent

I must first say, thanks to everyone in NZ for making our trip there so enjoyable (not that anyone we came into contact with will be reading this) and for anyone who hasn’t seen the Lord Of The Rings trilogy cos “it’s not my thing” then GO AND WATCH THEM just for the scenery.

Our flight across the Pacific was pretty good, nice plane & food and we got to see some movies – Tash watched “The Devil Wears Prada” (good chick flick but without the Hollywood ending) and “An Inconvenient Truth” (worrying), I watched most of “Click” (still not vintage Sandler but better than his recent rubbish) and “A Scanner Darkly” (very cool acted/animated thing). We also had to cope with crossing the International dateline, which meant we landed before we took off?!

My worries of trying to work out what Jamie would look like if he had grown his hair, or had a beard, or was super huge, or was wearing dungarees, were all put to rest when he met us at the airport – he’s still the same old Jamie (although it did take him at least 2 days before an nipple tweaking & arm punching commenced). We then got to experience Jamie’s driving skills before Lilly returned home form work. The rest of the last week and a half has been mostly spent sleeping in, dosing on the net, playing with the cats and watching J&L’s new HUGE plasma tv – Return Of The Jedi looks especially cool.


As any regular readers of J&L’s blog will know we all went to a Halloween party hosted by Lilly’s sister, Angela, and her husband, Phillip. Sorting costumes was cool cos we went to a Thrift SUPERstore – if I’d had the spare cash & luggage space, I could have bought so much stuff! In the end Tash found a Velma from Scooby-Doo influenced knitted dress, this inspired me to track down a Shaggy style t-shirt & cuddly Scoob. Lily found a 70’s trouser suit and Jamie settled on a Cosby jumper. However, Mr. “Grumpy arsed Englishman who doesn’t do Halloween” then whiffled for the next few days about NOT wearing the Cosby jumper. Instead, on the day, and after a bit of rearrangement in the pants area, Jamie decided on Lilly’s old cheerleader uniform, which he was only gonna wear for an hour or so, but ended up in it all night. Most of the cross dressing antics were very amusing, although I’m not sure if my face has recovered from its own cheer-ladyboy crotch dance. We all avoided the karaoke however Jamie & I did pitch in with some excellent harmonies for Bo-Rhap.


As expected there are a huge amount of food outlets everywhere but I’ve decided to save our fast food review until we’ve been to as many different places as possible.

The only other highlights so far have been the ridiculous phone calls to the Greyhound service line. Whilst trying to sort our bus tickets for the north east I got put through 4 operators before being passed on to someone in Canada who only dealt with shipping! I then called to complain about this ineptitude and why such a huge company couldn’t take an international credit card, and I ended up speaking to a guy who was an even less enthusiastic than Pedro from Napoleon Dynamite. I eventually asked (in the most pompous English accent I could, much to the hilarity of Tash & Lilly) “Is my money not good enough”, to which Pedro replied “No”. Greyhound customer service is shit, and only redeemed by the guy with gold teeth at the Hayward ticket booth who managed to help us finally get our tickets.

We also saw a lady get mugged outside the supermarket, who upon resisting said mugging was called a bitch! Oh, how ungrateful she was for not giving up her handbag. We walked the lady to her car and then walked back home even faster.