Hello all

For those of you who haven't checked the site in a week or so we uploaded our Las Vegas & Grand Canyon blog and photos a couple of days ago so they will be accessible from the relevant tabs at the top of the page.

Well we left Las Vegas last Wednesday and arrived back in Hollywood 7 hours later. The first half of the journey was brilliant as we both slept but the last part was painfully slow and we swore we were never going to arrive. Luckily we did and checked into the same hostel we stayed in when we were here a couple of weeks ago. We then walked down Hollywood Boulevard to the supermarket. On our way we noticed that the film premier for 10,000BC was happening at the Chinese Theatre. Realising that there wasn't any household names in the film, and the fact that we were really hungry after throwing away our disgusting Chinese lunch at the service station we decided not to hang around. Looking back there may have been some big stars coming to the premier but I think we had more fun devouring our 'spag bol'!!!!

Thursday we caught the shuttle bus the hostel put on to Venice Beach and Santa Monica. We started off at Venice Beach and walked along to Santa Monica. For those of you who didn't know, Venice Beach was one of the beaches used in the filming of Baywatch! We saw what we thought was the shows command centre in the distance and they definitely had the lifeguard huts, red swimming aids, yellow trucks & red swimsuits!!! The beach was lovely though with wide golden sands stretching for miles in each direction. We took a stoll along the beach front and soon realised that there are some very VERY strange people in Venice! Most think their either reggae stars or still in the 60s, and the other half think their beautiful - guys flashing their muscles and the women rollerblading along the paths. We had a few laughs and took in the scenery. After a while we reached a section near Santa Monica pier that had some exercise and gymnastic apparatus. We had a mess around on the rings and ropes but I don't think we fooled anyone into think we were locals as we didn't have lycra on!!!

On the pier we had some food and a look around before hitting the town and looking round the shops. You would not believe how cheap everything is out here, its just a shame we don't have much money! Unfortunately we didn't realise it at the time but a section of Forrest Gump was actually filmed on the pier so that could have been a great photo opportunity. Around 3:30 we caught the bus back to the hostel - so we thought! We caught the first bus ok and ended up on the right connection bus, just going in the wrong direction! We only realised once we'd got near the end of the line so had to get back on and track back the 30mins we'd been sitting there. The problem was it was now rush hour and there had a been a land/mud slide the previous night in the area closing a main road. This had created major traffic jams along the route we needed to take. After 2hrs sitting stationary and another hour moving we finally made it back to the hostel after 4hrs sitting on buses. Desperate for the toilet and food we must have looked a state when we walked through the door!

Friday we were up at 6:30 to catch the train to Disneyland. We arrived 15mins after the gates opened but there was already massive queues. We thought this was the start of a day spent in lines but luckily it didn't seem too bad inside. Helen was looking forward to this and was like a 5 year old kid all day! She made us queue up to go on the Winnie the Pooh ride of which we were the only adults in line that didn't have children! She then made us queue up to have our photo taken with Winnie, Eeyor and Tigger. We managed to get around the whole park going on all the main rides, and many others by 6 o'clock. We also saw the parade which was brilliant but we couldn't really stay for the fireworks at 9:30pm as we weren't sure about trains from Downtown LA to Hollywood -we certainly didn't want to get stuck there, and there wasn't really anything else we wanted to see. Plus it seemed to be getting busier as the day went on and there were still people piling in as we walked out. Back at the hostel we had dinner before packing our bags ready for out flight to New York the following day.

We were up at 4:30am to catch the shuttle bus to the airport. The flight was smooth enough until we got close to New York. An announcement came over from the pilot to explain the weather was bad at JFK and we had to circle for a bit. By the time we'd finished our in flight plotter looked like a 3 year old kid had scribbled all over it with crayons we'd done that many circles! We eventually landed after circling for 1hr 30mins pretty fed up and very hungry - the beef stir-fry looked more like dog food than human food! Our bags also seemed to be last off the carousel and we still had a hour and half on the air train and subway to our hostel. Once we were here had some dinner and then passed out.

We've got 6 days here before we arrive back in the UK on Saturday 15th. We'll probably update you on our time in NY from home but we'll be sure to upload the photo's and blog once we've got ourselves sorted.

See you all very soon

Gavin and Helen