Day 7

As we had asked to check out later to coincide with checking into our new hotel we had another lazy morning in luxury indulging in some American culture with the Jerry Springer Show! After checking our :( we got a taxi downtown to our new hotel in a much dodgier and run down part of town. However, it was very convenient as the greyhound station was right next door. After exploring the area we agreed it was definitely the chavvier (is that a word?) end of Vegas. With not much to do or look at we ended up having a fairly early buffet dinner in the hotel, encountering a very chatty and somewhat lonely American lady who tried to invite herself onto our table :S bless... After dinner and facing a very early morning we attempted to hit the bed but got distracted by our new found movie channel and ended up watching the whole of blood diamond and half of pirates of the carribbean 2! We finally got to bed about 1am with the alarm set for 4... ouch.

Day 8

Very early start to head to greyhound station. There were a lot of very strange people there and it was just like watching the line up for the jerry springer show that we had been watching the morning before! There was also a kinda freaky guy standing behind us in the line who slowly got closer and closer until we could actually smeoll every unit of alcohol on his breath. yum. The bus itself was pretty average although having heard a few horror stories of greyhounds i was surprised that we didnt have seatbelts. As trhe bus was very busy it also turned out that we couldn't sit together until about 2 hours into the journey when i leaned over the aisle to talk to Maika and the guy next to her reaqlised we were together and offered to switch seats as he was getting off at the next stop anyway. Probably the first kind act we have actually witnessed whilst out here!? Our driver was also pretty crazy lecturing us for at least 20 mins about the do's and dont's of greyhound travel. We also hit an incrediblyheavy rain storm that only lasted about 2 mins but reduced visibility to about 5 metres.

As we arrived into Flagstaff we decided to phone the hostel to see if they could give us directions/a lift as we had all our bags with us. Unfortunately the car was being used att hat time so we lugged the bags the mile of so up the road until we found the sign. However, it turns out that the grand canyon hostel was not actually the right one and we were instead staying in its sister hostel the DeBeau hostel just dsown the road. It was also at this moment that we realised the bag had split at the bottom :S

We checked in no problem by a friendly lady from London and found our dim, small yet comfortable motel style room. However, one thing about FLagstaff is the Amtrak train which runs straight through the middle every half hour or so throughout the night and blasts its horn at full volume everytime, shaking what felt like the entire structure of the room! We decided to smile and think of it as giving the place 'character' haha. Aftewr our day of travelling we decided to splash out (ish) on a pasta dish from a restaurant specialising in locally grown produce (mummy annd daddy spooner would be proud!! :D)

Before bed we signed up for the grand canyon tour to depart the next morning and went to bed relishing the trip the next day :)

AC and MS xxx