The last leg of our round the world trip was heading home via the states and after a fairly quiet time in the cook islands we were looking forward to something a little more exciting.Unfortunately, it took us a fairly long time to get out of the country. The plane normally leaves on Saturday evening at 11.59 at night. That's right, they officially schedule the flight for 1 minute to midnight as they can't leave after midnight because that would be flying on a Sunday which isn't normally allowed. However, they don't seem to really mind because our flight was delayed and didn't eventually leave until 3am in the morning!!!!That delay wouldn't normally be so bad, but there is NOTHING at the airport, its basically just a check in desk and then you go through security into a reception room, and there is nothing to keep us amused apart from a few games of scrabble. (That last few hours definitely made the $20 on scrabble well worth it) Although, having got on the plane, it was easily the oldest plane we had travelled on in any country (even worse than the one in india) It was a 747, but a proper old school one, where the move was shown on a big screenin the middle of the plane.

Unfortunately, because of the delay in our flight, we managed to miss our connecting flight that we had bought. I swear I could actually see it take off from LAX as we were coming in to land. Luckily, as the flight was with Virgin America, they were frankly AWESOME. We explained the delay and the woman at the desk simply said it happens all the time and put us on the next flight out for free! You wouldn't catch Ryanair doing that! And to make things even better, as Virgin America has only been going for 6 months, all of their planes are gorgeous looking brand new A320's. (that's very geeky, but trust me when I tell you that it was a very nice plane) and I even gotthe extra legroom seats !!!

We only had a week in America overall and this was going to be split between San Francisco and Los Angeles.We were lucky enough that I have some family in SF and we were staying with my 2nd cousin Noreen. She was based in a part of town called The Mission which used to be one of the original Mexican colonies in San Francisco. Its a really cool part of town, which has a cool villagey feel. There is also a large church there from the original Mexican colony which is really nice to walk around. After having a quick stroll, it actually came as a surprise to walk out via the graveyard and stumble across the grave of a galwayman!! As always a quick trip round a graveyard always keeps me happy and there were loads of irish graves there to keep my attention.

San Francisco is a great town and even after our first day it was clear that we had seriously underestimated the amount of time that we should have spent there. The 2nd day we spent doing some of the more touristy stuff, as a famous harbour town, some of the most visited sights are around the pier's including pier 39-which is a bit like covent garden by the water. There are loads of bars, and restaurants; but the main attraction bizarrely is a colony of sea lions that live within the pier area.Apparently, they all started living there when one of the piers was abandoned and now they are protected and pull in tourists all day. We also took a boat tour out under the golden gate bridge and heard all about the bay area. Unfortunately, as we didn't have much time, we had to miss out on Alcatraz as the queue was huge and we hadn't gotten round to booking it online.Instead, we went to ferry terminal and met my cousin for a drink or two. I think that was a fair trade as no doubt i'll be coming back to San Fran.

San Francisco is famous for its hippy culture and the heart of this is Haight/Ashbury and which is a district to the south of the city. We went there for lunch one day and it was a lot like what you would expect. There were a lot of second hand stores and quite funky vegetarian restaurants. We went to a Mexican restaurant there and had great burrito's but overheard the kind of talk I think you could only hear in san Francisco, when the guy in the table next to us was discussing publishing his anthology of communist science fiction???? Who even writes one story of communist sci-fi let alone enough to make an anthology.One other aspect of our trip to San Francisco that really stuck out for me was the fact that the democratic convention was on at the same time. In a city like SF which is so political this made for a really interesting distraction, and we really got to see a lot of what the fuss was about Obama. (not the most interesting thing for the blog, but I really liked it)

Anyway, after 3 days we left SF and headed for LA; which if I'm honest was a bit of a letdown. There arent many things to really do in the town apart from a few them parks.The big problem is that unlike SF or New York for example, the city is really spread out and you do genuinely need a car to get around. We obviously hadn't booked anything and we basically just got a tour bus around to have a look at the sights and a bit of a stroll around the shops.In retrospect, I would say that we should have stayed n San Francisco for a bit longer rather than come to LA as it appealed much more. The 3 days in LA were the end of our trip though and after 6 months, it was time to head home. If I'm honest, we were ready to head back about now as the journeying had begun to drag a little and particularly as we were in the states and things were so similar to home, made it feel like it was time to finish.

The End......... For now!