Day 23: Hollywood. Today we did the last of our driving on this holiday. We left Santa Barbara and headed to our final mainland stop of Hollywood, LA. To be honest, I was a tad more anxious during the 6-lane portions of Highway 101 today heading into LA than I was winding around the Big Sur, but we made good time, only taking about an hour and a half to reach our final destination. After we checked into our Hollywood hotel and said goodbye to the family trucks...

Day 22: Santa Barbara. After spending most of yesterday in a car, today was a bit of a lazy day - which is ok, because Santa Barbara is a lazy kinda town. With all the streets lined with iconic towering palms and sea breezes coming in off the bay, it's the type of environment where it's hard not to put up the feet. Regardless though, while we're here, we were determined to see SB. We started off by heading down the end of our street to the marina. From there ...

Day 21: The Long & Winding Road. We set off early this morning (about 8.30am) and it wasn't long before we hit the stretch of highway known as the 'Big Sur'. From this point, my beloved's navigation skills were not required - turn too hard left and I cross the lane into opposing traffic and a mountain face; turn too far right and it's a loooong way down to the ocean below - I kinda had it covered! Given we were heading south, my driver's side was hugging t...

Day 20: Monterey by the Bay. Today we focused our attention on Monterey itself, in particular its major tourist drawcard, Cannery Row. To start the day, we headed to the Monterey Aquarium situated at the end of the Row. Safe to say Nic and Josh got so much more from this attraction than I did - e.g do you know how many species of jellyfish there are in the bay? Alot. After the aquarium, we had lunch on the row, followed by some more shopping and sightseeing....

Day 19: Time to hit the Road! With the Giants winning Game 1 of the World Series overnight, San Francisco might have been smiling but the weather was miserable when we left this morning. Rain and fog greeted us as we left our apartment and walked up a block to the Hertz office within the Westin St Francis Hotel to collect our rental car. I google-mapped various ways of getting out of the city, but in the end I went for the most direct (and simplest) path - we ...