Walking from the metro station over to the Greyhound station I think I experienced one of my least favourite parts of travelling. Carrying a 17kg backpack, 4kg day pack and 3kg general bits and bobs shopper in a 35c heatwave 8 blocks through the industrial district of Los Angeles for about 20 minutes (scratch that - walking 20 minutes in 41 degree desert Arizonan heat is worse) is a pretty horrendous experience!! That ordeal over with I settled into my 3 hour bus journey to San Diego, worryingly anything less than 6 hours is now seeming like a walk in the park! I was staying in a hostel on Ocean Beach to give myself a day in the sun before moving into the city, but the hostel I was in wasn't the nicest one I've ever been in so it was a good job I wasn't planning on spending much time inside. There were two girls from Lancashire in my dorm (Burnley I think) who had spent the summer working at Universal studios in Orlando during their University break, which initially sounded awesome until I heard some of the horror stories! These included having to stand for 8 hours a day in 35 degree heat with no shade and only a half hour break, getting black carded for minor infractions (they seemed really strict) and just general horrible management. One of the girls worked in Harry Potter world and said that what used to be the dueling dragons ride in Universal is now the dragon ride for Harry Potter, but they had to change the layout as one man got blinded when someone's ring flew off and hit him in the eye. They are also apparently going to build them at the other Universal sites in the next few years, as well as extend the current one in Orlando. All the inside goss me!

It dawned bright and sunny on my proposed beach day, and after managing to lather myself in enough suncream to sink a ship I spent the day relaxing and slowly roasting myself - I think it was about 38 degrees so no wonder I felt like I was in an oven. I thought I'd managed to get away without any sunburn as I was pretty religious about cream but still managed to get a stripe on my stomach and under my armpits where I'd been holding my book up to read. I just can't win 555. Channeling my inner Ron Burgundy I got a burrito for tea and went to watch the sunset on the fishing pier - I have never seen so many fishermen in one place, and there was a greedy pelican hanging around for scraps. A few drinks in the evening with potentially the loudest and drunkest Russian guy I've ever met, as well as others but he was the most memorable, ended up with a few of us walking down to the beach where there was a bonfire going on, which felt like I was in some kind of film as it is so quintessentially American. I wasn't so happy the next morning when all my clothes smelt of fire though!

Post-beach I was moving into Lucky D's hostel in downtown San Diego, situated near the historical Gaslamp Quarter. The bus system in San Diego is a lot better than most of the others in the US I've experienced (and I'm writing this in Flagstaff) so it was an easy trip from the beach. Settling into my new room I could hear the sounds of the baseball game at the Padres stadium at the end of the block which was pretty cool - a lovely welcome to the city proper. Since I'd arrived early afternoon I took the opportunity to have a look around the gaslamp quarter and Balboa park. Although nice to look at and with some cool little boutiques, as well as a LOT of bars and restaurants, the gaslamp quarter wasn't anything too exciting so I jumped on the bus up to the aforementioned park. When I arrived I was shocked - it was like being transported to Madrid with the architecture of the buildings (it's where all the museums are) not to mention the amount of Spanish being spoken everywhere. I didn't realise until I arrived how close San Diego is to the Baja Mexican border - apparently San Diego and Tijuana are the largest bi-national conurbation shared between the United States and Mexico. Because of this there are loads of Mexican restaurants (yay!) and Hispanic people, as well as Mexican culture, as there is in the rest of California. You can actually only teach in the state if you speak Spanish as well as English as so many of the students now are bilingual. Whilst in Balboa park I also saw a woman walking a rabbit - I definitely knew I was in America!

Again San Diego had a lot of homeless people but they seemed a lot more civilized than the people in San Francisco and LA - they all had their own little shopping trollies with their belongings, and it seemed to be a real community, they all hung around by the library and post office, maybe because they have bathrooms I'm not sure, but the level of hygiene seemed a lot better and they weren't as prone to shouting random things at you in the street. There were also a lot more ladies as well as a couple of families with kids on the streets- what is going on in this country? In the evening I went to a bar with a group of people which was originally meant to be going to a pub quiz then to bowling and eventually just a crappy bar, mainly because it was organized by this American girl who worked at the hostel and couldn't sort a piss up in a brewery. Plus she was wasted by the time we went out so that didn't help!

There were two reasons I decided to go to the San Diego zoo the following day - the main one being its starring role in Anchorman and the second being that pretty much every human being in the history of time who has visited San Diego (and even some who haven't) had recommended it to me. I was glad I listened to their advice because it was a great day out. Now I've said in previous posts (after I went to Singapore zoo I seem to recall) that I didn't really like zoos, and this still holds largely true BUT, and it's a big but, I was very very impressed with the animals at San Diego and the general upkeep of the place, the animals seemed a lot more content than at other places I'd been and were generally a lot more active, having lots of things to keep them busy. I do still hold however that only animals that are part of conservation projects should be there, no matter how cute capuchin monkeys are. Sadly they aren't always the cutest animals so don't pull a crowd.

The highlights of the zoo for me were several - the meerkats are always a crowd pleaser as far as I'm concerned, seeing the lions sleeping in their glass walled den made me realise how huge they actually are, the two tigers playing in the water pool with a giant boat float, baby giraffes who even at 6 months old were taller than me (not hard), the spectacular pandas - a lot bigger than I imagined and, unsurprisingly, sitting shredding bamboo like a pro, and, of course, the bears. San Diego has two grizzly bear brothers who were rescued from one of the National Parks, and I arrived in perfect time as they had just been given some humongous bones to chew on and play with so were really active. I definitely would NOT want to meet one of those in the woods…you woke the bears, why would you do that?!? San Diego also provided me with potentially the best quote to prove why Americans should not be raising children; when I was looking at the capuchin monkeys a father said to his 6 year old son - look it's like the hangover monkey, you remember, the one who dealt drugs. Now I'm no prude but that's not the most auspicious start to life for a six year old!

It seems like I had loads of time in San Diego, and I guess I did, as the day following zoo day was spent on another beach - this time Coronado beach, which I went to by accident as I couldn't be bothered waiting for a later bus. It was a nice beach though, a slightly more upscale area of San Diego with a really fancy hotel on the waterfront and someone setting up for a beach wedding whilst I was there. Coronado is also a base for the Naval air force so on a regular basis helicopter and jet planes flew right overhead, which whilst noisy was also impressive to watch as they were so close you could see the landing gear and even the little pilots heads. It was like being in Top Gun, what with the volleyball nets nearby too. The only downside to the day was the wind as I went home covered in a fine layer of sand on every exposed bit of skin. This equals an itchy bus ride back haha.

Since I had to check out the next morning I thought it would be an excellent idea to have drinks in the hostel with one of the guys from my room, Peter, who was there to do a semester abroad (I have met so many people doing this I'm starting to wish I'd had the opportunity), Marie from London, Meaghan from Australia and a few others who were staying there. It was this night that I discovered Gordon's vodka. When I say Gordon's I mean as in the gin, and I didn't even realise they made vodka. It was delicious though (or as delicious as vodka can be) and was way better than Smirnoff, as well as only costing $24 for nearly two litres. BARGAIN! Unluckily for me I had to check out at 10am so perhaps going to bed at 4 wasn't the best idea I ever had, but it wasn't the craziest drunk night it was pretty relaxed so luckily I didn't have much of a hangover, well nothing that a McDonald's cheeseburger couldn't fix!

Marie, Meaghan and I decided to do something with the sunny day available to us so went up to Balboa park for a wander round. It was on this walk that we coined the term 'drive by compliment' due to the number of things shouted out of cars or even just muttered on the pavement at three girls on a walk in the sun. This time we were there at dinnertime so the botanical greenhouse thing was open and we went in for a look around. It had some of the most gorgeous orchids, as well as loads of carnivorous plants which creep me out every time, I think I'm just waiting for them to discover one big enough to eat people. Gulp! By the time we had walked to and from the park we were boiling (yet another hot day in San Diego - milk was a bad choice) so decided to go to the cinema to see Paranorman, a very peculiar film about a boy who can see ghosts and has to save his town from a vengeful ghost. It was quite melancholy in parts and a bit dark but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

From San Diego I had another overnight bus (saving money on a hostel!), moving into my second state of the trip, Arizona (which always makes me think of Grey's Anatomy).

Becca