Grand Canyon - April 2005

After visiting Las Vegas, we had about an eight hour drive to the Grand Canyon through the Nevada and Arizona countryside.

We went past Hoover Dam, which is an amazing place with an interesting history. It is bloody high too...I wasn't too keen to get close to the edge of the dam.

Passing about a thousand winnebago's (massive mobile homes that look like buses as they come towards you), we eventually got closer to the Grand Canyon.

We had discovered a 50's styled cafe at Williams that we stopped at and may I say, it was getting quite wet and rather cold.

Wondering what the Grand Canyon would be like, we ventured on to the National Park.

Turns out, it was wet. Very wet. Quite frankly, the Grand Canyon, as we couldn't see the other side or vastness (as we discovered later), was little better than the Blue Mountains in Sydney....it seemed.

We decided to take the bus along the canyon and we stopped at the first stop.

Please note the photo, this is what we saw of the Grand Canyon. This is not retouched or manipulated. Fog! Loads of it.

Was pretty cool but we were a tad disappointed but probably not as disappointed as the hordes of bus trip people who had made the long journey there and back to Las Vegas, but hey, luck of the draw really.

The most amazing thing for me was when we were waiting for the bus to come back to drop us at the lodge near our car...it started to rain, then it started to snow and sleet. Well, I always had visions of it being warm there, ignorantly perhaps, but who's have thought it would snow on us at the Grand Canyon.

So, we headed to our hotel at Flagstaff, in Arizona, a couple of hours away.

We ate some delicious thai food....maybe the best we have had. When we came out of the restaurant that night, it was snowing, massive snowflakes. Very impressive.

We decided to spend a second night in Flagstaff, taking a day away from Los Angeles and fortunately we did as we could then head back to the Grand Canyon.

The next day, we did head back to the canyon and let me say, it was amazing.

It is so vast and we had a great time wandering around the canyon, with perfect weather...bright sunshine, but cool and easy to walk around.

The Grand Canyon is a cool place and let's just hope the Americans don't spoil it....although, it remans reasonably pristine to date, so here's hoping it remains so.

Las Vegas - April 2005

Las Vegas was a city we were looking forward to visiting for some time....and we weren't disappointed.

It's a great place, assuming you treat it the way it is....it's a fake city, with fake attractions, but at the same time, it also seems to be the type of place that realises this and for this reason, it doesn't take itself seriously, as many other US cities possibly do.

At any rate, we liked Las Vegas.

We stayed at the Imperial Palace Hotel which was, let's be honest, not the flashest hotel but hey, it does the job and the location in the centre of the 'strip' is brilliant.

You could turn left or right from the hotel and head towards fantastic highlights.

We hardly gambled, in fact, that was the least of the attractions for us.

Why waste time and money gambling when there are so many free attractions to take a look at.

Some of the highlights were...

Paris Las Vegas.....Vegas' version of Paris, complete with 2/3rd scale Eiffel Tower....a ceiling designed to be similar to Galleries Lafayette in Paris....fake Parisian streets to wander...not quite as cobblestoned as the real thing, but cleaner with less dogshit than Paris! They even have their own Arc de Triomphe.

It's pretty cool.

Bellagio Hotel is very cool. This is a pretty up-market hotel and has some pretty cool displays inside...plus, one of the absolute highlights of Vegas, the dancing fountains. They are great to watch and with various different themes, you could watch for ages.

We saw the Lions at the MGM Grand, the volcano, the Pirate Ship and show, Caesars Palace Casino, the Castle at Excalibur, the Pyramid at Luxor, the clown at Boardwalk Casino, M & M world, the small scale Venice and one of the better places was the less visited Fremont Street. The TV Monitor on the ceiling is about half a kilometre long (maybe more) and is very cool.

We also visited Hoover Dam while we were there (which is bloody huge!) and all in all, we had a cool time in Las Vegas.

Can't wait to get back there!

Death Valley - April 2005

Death Valley, California....certainly an interesting sounding place....but would the place match the name.

Yes!

Death Valley was very cool indeed...well, it was kinda warm, temperature-wise, but cool overall.

We had left the fabulous California town of Bakersfield...akin to an episode of Jerry Springer...and drove through the Kern Valley, which I have to admit was a hairy drive.

Samantha was more concerned with going over the edge of the road and into a ravine which had a river below it, several hundred feet below, at times.

That wasn't so much my concern as I was comfortable with the drive, but my concern was the massive boulders perched, seriously, very precariously above us. I had one eye on the boulders, looking for any sign of movement and the other eye on the road.

Certainly an experience, let me say.

Anyways, we got through and entered long stretches of highway in Death Valley.

The most amazing thing is that you are surrounded by desert, yet in the mountains surrounding the desert, there are snow capped mountains. Amazing to us anyway as in Australia, if it's hot it's hot and there aint no snow!

We had a good look around a place called Badwater. This is a salt plain and is about 85 metres below sea level....thus, was quite warm there. It's called Badwater because early explorers took donkeys and horses through and they refused to drink the water here, thus Badwater.

People have died here, recently in fact. Seems that people try to cross the salt lake but it's very warm and disorienting and not exactly safe.

I was keen to see a rattlesnake and despite heading out to the sand dunes, we missed out on this privelege.

We did however, visit a classic desert house, called Scotty's Castle. This was unplanned but really cool.

The story that went with the house was fabulous and it's really worth the trip.

Seems that Scotty was a ripoff merchant but he befriended the owner of the house, who allowed Scotty to live there because the owner reckoned that Scotty was a great friend and worth it because he was such a great laugh. It is truly a story of friendship and is a fabulous story.

We visited Death Valley in April, when it is cooler....a good time to check it out.

Big Sur (California Coast) - April 2005

The Big Sur coast, in California, runs roughly from San Francisco to somewhere north of LA.

You need a car, which was fine as we hired one in SF and cruised down the highway to Big Sur.

The views are spectacular and as always, there are some class bridges to keep me happy!

I suppose it's reasonably similar to the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, but perhaps bigger and better hyped.

It is a great place to drive though, with sweeping views down the coast and out to sea.

We also went through the towns of Santa Cruz, San Luis Obispo and Carmel, where Clint Eastwood lives. We didn't see him though and in fact, it was very windy when we were in Carmel with sand being blown every which way, so we trundled on.

One of the highlights of our whole trip was to be discovered at a place called San Simeon.

Samantha had mentioned that she wanted to visit Hearst Castle. I was unconvinced but it wasn't a big ask to do something that Samantha wanted to do, so off we went after spending a night in San Simeon, essentially a town with only motels for the Hearst Castle.

By the way, just outside San Simeon, on the drive down, we stopped at a beach and saw hundreds of sealions (I think...sorry if you are a marine expert!). Man, they stunk! Was pretty cool though to see so many close up and they also made a real racket. But well cool.

Anyways, back to Hearst Castle.

As I mentioned, no expectations from me, but when we went up there, and wandered around on the tour, it was seriously cool.

William Randolph Hearst had travelled throughout Europe as a youngster and this clearly influenced him to build this massive mansion and he adorned it with loads of amazing items from around the world.

It truly is brilliant and I would recommend to everyone to visit at least once.

San Francisco - April 2005

Let's begin with, I'm a big Dirty Harry fan.

So, to visit San Francisco, the scene of many a Dirty Harry movie, was always going to be a highlight.

Add to that, the brilliant Golden Gate Bridge is in San Francisco as well as the amazing Alcatraz Island and you've got yourself a pretty cool place to visit.

We wandered around town for a while and I wanted to walk up some hills, but Samantha put paid to that and insisted we catch the trolley car to Fisherman's Wharf. Samantha was right as some of the streets are seriously steep!

Lombard Street was on the way so we stopped off and had a wander down the street billed as the world's crookedest street. It is very steep and zig zags back and forth to probably live up to its claim.

Fisherman's Wharf was fairly overrated to be honest, although Ghirardelli Chocolates are down there. Predictably, we visited and bought some chocolates.

One of the highlights on the trolley car trip back was when the trolley car stopped bang in the middle of an intersection of four streets and the brake man jumped out, headed across to the local pizza parlour and ordered a pizza for the trip back! Remember, this was peak hour to! Classic.

One of the major reasons we visited San Francisco though, was to visit Alcatraz.

Alcatraz was once a major prison with some pretty serious villains banged up there. In fact, Al Capone was sent there.

It's certainly an interesting place. Some parts of it were seriously cold when the breeze blew in and I don't think it would have been a good place to be...although, that is of course, the point.

The view though, when you can leave of your own accord, is amazing and is to be appreciated. You can see the Golden Gate Bridge really well from Alcatraz and it's now a National Park where loads of birds nest.

I would definitely recommend everyone visit Alcatraz, especially if you are interested in history.

The Golden Gate Bridge is a world icon and it certainly lived up to all expectations. It really is amazing.

We walked across part of the bridge but it isn't exactly a fantastic walk as the cars are speeding along and it's quite noisy, so we headed back to town via Height Ashbury. This area is a pretty cool area with loads of clothes shops that are not the standard High Street shops.....but enough on that.

San Francisco is a cool place and we'll be heading back, especially to the Cheesecake Factory, very nice indeed!

Toronto & Niagara Falls - April 2005

Just a fleeting visit to Canada on this occasion, essentially to visit Niagara Falls really.

Frank had visited Niagara Falls in 1944 and mentioned it was pretty good, so why not, it sounded like a good place to go.

First though, we went to Toronto and used this as a brief base for our bus trip to Niagara Falls.

Toronto itself is an ok place, very beige. The buildings all seem beige. Maybe it's the light, or the concrete, i'm not sure. Either way, it's a beige town.

There were some pretty cool shops in one area, sorta similar to Newtown or Fitzroy. Independent sorta stuff. We wandered round there for a while, but ultimately, as mentioned, we were mainly there to visit the falls.

We caught a Greyhound bus down to Niagara and walked from there. The bus station isn't exactly the best place to be in America but that said, we lived to tell the tale.

As we walked toward the falls, we could hear a definite rumbling noise and this got louder and louder until we could see the falls in the distance. It has to be said, the falls are pretty noisy and quite spectacular.

Niagara itself is a dump with loads of amusement parlours and cheap, tacky souvenir shops. Must admit, didn't quite expect that, but at least the buildings are set a fair way back from the falls, so it could have been worse.

The Maid of the Mist boat wasn't operating as it was out of season, so that would have been good, but it was still cool to see the falls.

The obligatory photos were taken and one of the best things was to see the ice buildup, so many layers were visible, and the amazing blue colour of the water after it hits the deck from a great height.

The water also rushes extremely quickly. I certainly wouldn't want to go over the edge, that's for sure, although people have survived the fall.

All in all, it was well worth the experience but we left wondering what you'd do there for more than a day to be perfectly honest.

New York & New Jersey - April 2005

New York, New York....it's a wonderful town!

Samantha and I had been keen to visit New York for ages and finally, here we were in the Big Apple.

What to do? So much to do and see!

We flew into JFK in the mid afternoon and after spending a while getting through US customs and getting our retina photographed and fingerprints taken for the US to ponder over at their leisure, we took a taxi into Manhattan.

We went past Flushing Meadow (US Open Tennis venue) and Shea Stadium (NY Mets Baseball) and lobbed at out hotel.

Perhaps New York isn't for everyone but we instantly loved it.

It was late afternoon and we needed to adjust to the new timezone so we decided to walk down to Times Square.

It's brilliant...well, at night. During the day it was fairly average, but well cool at night.

We wandered around there for a bit, checking out some shops including a massive Toys R Us which has a ferris wheel in the foyer!

The weather was fantastic in New York when we were there and the next day we caught the subway downtown and caught a ferry to Liberty Island to check out the Statue of Liberty.

The Statue of Liberty looks pretty small from afar but up close, it's a reasonable size.

Apparently you could climb right to the top in the past, but now, with added security, you can only go to a certain height. In any case, we decided not to worry about getting to the top and we instead chose to walk around the island and enjoy the views back across the river to Manhattan.

It's an amazing view!

Part of the same ferry trip entitles you to visit Ellis Island.

I wasn't greatly aware of Ellis Island but as often happens, this turned out to be one of the highlights.

Ellis Island is where thousands of European immigrants landed to begin a new life in USA.

The museum would have seen some amazing stories and it was truly inspirational to read about some of the stories of people travelling to live in New York and beyond.

The ceiling was fabulously tiled and overall, Ellis Island is very much worth travelling to.

We caught the ferry back from Ellis Island and wandered towards Wall Street. I have to say, the flag on the front of the Stock Exchange building is one of the largest flags i've ever seen and come to that, NYC has a serious amount of US flags., obviously indicating the massive amount of patriotism demonstrated since 911.

We briefly had a look at Ground Zero, which is a sad place, as we all know.

New York is a great place to walk around, despite what the taxi drivers tell you.

We walked to loads of places, including Tribeca, Little Italy, we visited one of the places I had always wanted to visit, CBGB's and Joey Ramone Place.

On a separate morning we caught the subway to near the Brooklyn Bridge and walked across.

This bridge is fantastic with a separate level for pedestrians and cyclists.

This made it a very pleasant walk across the bridge to Brooklyn and offered some great views of Manhattan, Brooklyn and of course, some great photo opportunities.

Central Park is massive! There are some areas we had read that you wouldn't necessarily want to visit, but we had a wander around some parts of Central Park and all was good. One of the interesting places was Bethesda Fountain.

The fountain wasn't working as the pipes freeze in winter so they turn them off, but it was still interesting, especially as they had featured in Angels in America.

Another interesting place was near the Dakota Buildings, the apartments that John Lennon had lived, and ultimately died. It's a beautiful area and the Strawberry Fields garden was also beautiful.

Of course NYC is famous for tall buildings and we saw loads of them, including the Empire State Building. Incidentally, we wandered straight past this initially until I thought, hang on, that looks like....and it was.

We stayed for five nights in NYC and it was very cool. Towards the end of our stay, we went on a Sopranos Tour. For those who have lived in a bubble, The Sopranos is a mob show set in New Jersey. We like it anyway, so we had booked a tour and it was really good.

Not only did we get to venture to New Jersey, apparently called 'the Garden State'...??? but we also saw where they shoot some of the sections of The Sopranos.

Well worth it as was New York. A great city with loads to do and see.

We'll be back.