Virtually no-one has had anything good to say about Los Angeles so it was with some reluctance that we entered the city in rush hour (7 lanes of standing traffic) having had the bright idea to skip San Diego to spend 3 days in downtown LA! We reasoned that given the population of the city, surely it can't be that bad and thankfully we were right! We landed on our feet immediately having chosen to stay in a hotel near Hollywood Blvd behind the Kodak theatre, calle...

San Francisco is supposedly the foggy city, for us, it was more the like very-long-walks-up-massive-hills city...and boy did we walk! We arrived in blazing sunshine to discover our grotty motel in the Marina area had no free parking for about a 3 miles radius, unwilling to the pay the £20/day the motel lady blasély recommended we do to park the car in a garage, we drove off to Castro (about 5 miles from Marina)to stash the car on free roads for the week. Castro...

We arrived at Napa, home to californian wine :) after two very scenic, but rainy, days driving through Northern California. The rain didn't matter though, because the scenery was just as stunning (if very different) to what we saw in Oregon. First stop was the Redwood National Park - a large forest made up of the most ginormous Redwood trees you have ever seen. We did a short trek and once in the middle of the trees it was magical, like something out of Avatar. ...

Portland, Oregon couldn't have been more different from New Orleans and the south. It was like arriving in another country, the landscape, climate, people, their views and culture were totally different but it was really interesting to have such a contrast. Portland itself was a gorgeous, modern, clean, green city. It had a nice hippy vibe, everything was about sustainabilty, environment, being outdoors etc and was lovely to just hang around in. Thanks to top ti...

New Orleans, or N'Awlins as the locals pronounce it, is amazing. It's a city with a massive vibe running through it and is is seriously cool. We spent four days there trying to soak up as much as possible, but of the places we have been so far, this is the one where I think we could have stayed for a lot longer. Obviously most people today think of New Orleans and immediately think of Katrina, or 'the storm'as it is referred to there, but the city refuses to be...