The first night of our stay in San Francisco was also the switching on of the snowflake lights, which were on the streetlights of the main shopping street. So after having dinner a few of us went down to watch the big switch on. There wasn't really too much to see, but the lights were very pretty. Afterwards we signed up to the hostel pub crawl but soon regretted this when we found ourselves queuing up outside bars in the pouring rain. After standing outside on...

Once we were back in L.A. we took the metro to the airport where we picked up our white, sparkly, automatic Ford Focus. I was brave and took the first turn at the wheel; it was a little strange at first as I adjusted to being on the right side of the road and the left side of the car. The fact that it was an automatic made things a lot easier, even though I still kept trying to change gear via the car door. We drove out of L.A. and headed for the coast road....

From L.A. we caught a greyhound bus 3 hours south to San Diego. We arrived at 2pm and walked in the sun through the town to our hostel. San Diego was alot smaller and prettier than L.A. and had a wonderful mexican vibe to it. We checked into our 6 bed dorm and here we met Jake, he was from Seattlle and travelling America on his bike. Two Aussie girls we met in L.A., Kathryn and Siobhan, were also at the same hostel and so we started our stay with tacos and drink...

We landed in L.A. to lovely hot weather:-) Our hostel was just off Hollywood Boulevard so we walked straight out of the metro station and onto the Walk of Fame before we'd even had chance to put our bags down. We got to the hostel and enjoyed the BBQ they had on for that evening. The next day we we got the most important thing ticked off the list first....the Hollywood sign! We caught a bus and then walked up sereral steep streets to reach the sign. Amazingly it...