Early alarm wake up call at 4.45am! Some idiots from next door woke us up at about 4.15am though, trying to get in their room. And it took me ages to get to sleep so I've had about 3 and a half hours sleep!

We had to make our way over to the Excalibur hotel and park our car up, then go wait for our tour bus to pick us up at 6.15am.
The tour cost us $224 (£140) each and is to the Grand Canyon South Rim. Most of the tours actually go to the West Rim which is supposed to be nowhere near as nice, which we found out through a tour rep. We didn't book through her, so that's not why we were told that, and after Googling it all, it turns out the South Rim is much better.

Anyway, we got picked up and then taken to the tour office for registration and breakfast...coffee, juice and a Danish. "breakfast".
Then it was time to board our "Luxury coach". It was just a coach, which is fine, but just funny how they advertise it. Now for our 5 hour drive to the Grand Canyon....

We drove through Boulder City which was built to house all the workers for the Hoover Dam, and then saw the homes originally owned by the Rat Pack down near Lake Mead.

Not long after that we got to the Hoover Dam itself. We drove over it and then up a bit of a hill to get a good view of it. Then we had to drive back over it to take the new bypass road, as it's not a main road anymore. And part of the new bypass is a huge arch bridge across the canyon where the dam is - pretty good views of the Hoover Dam from there.

We weren't long in the state of Arizona before our coach got pulled over by Police. This copper came on proper shouting asking the driver why she didn't pull in at the port of entry. Sat there for nearly 30 minutes while it got sorted. Right joke.

Made a quick stop in McDonald's at 10am. Went to order some breakfast only to find out that Arizona is 1 hour ahead! Missed breakfast. How annoying is that when you've built yourself up to eat something!?
The dopey driver then nearly left two people there!

Next thing..........blow out!! Freakin' blew a tyre!!! 2 hours we were sat there at the side of the motorway. 1.40pm by the time we got going again. What the hell!?!?!?

We didn't get to the Grand Canyon until 3.30pm! Actually, 4.30pm as it's an hour ahead! And the worst of it all...we can't do our helicopter flight because they stop flying at 2.30pm!
So, then we spent most of our time discussing the situation with the bus driver and then ringing several companies to complain. In the end, we arranged to do the tour again tomorrow at no extra cost. They made me laugh - they were trying to charge us again for the tour tomorrow!
Then we have to ring to complain to get some compensation. I'm sick of things not going smoothly and having to complain! That's life I suppose. As Rocky Balboa once said, "it's not about how hard you can hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep on going". Legend.

We did did manage to see the Grand Canyon though...what an amazing site it is!! It's absolutely incredible, and looks even better with dustings of snow around. That was the view from Bright Angel Lodge. Then we drove onto Mathers Point. WOW!!!! Even better view. It's so deep and vast. It's bigger than you actually realise too. Where we were stood, it was 3 miles to the other side!

It was so cold out there, which we didn't realise it was going to be! Like I said, there's snow around! It was getting dark so it was all rushed there. We kind of just wanted to leave things for tomorrow at this point, but at the same time we've travelled all this way...

From there we went to the IMAX theatre for our lunch. Yes, our lunch and it was 6.30pm by this time, and we'd not even had anything to eat since 11am! Sandwich, bag of crisps, cheese string, apple, granola bar and a bottle of water - doesn't exactly cover tea as well does it? So we got some chicken noodle soup each from the cafe. Disgusting it was. Therese had to take it back, complain and get our money back.
Nothing has gone right today.

Something random.
Another thing Americans do:
American - "Where ya from?"
Me - "England"
American - "Heyyyyyy, these guys are from London!!!"
Americans believe that the only place in England is London.

We didn't get back to our motel until after 1am. And we've got to be up in a few hours to do it all over again.....

I was laid in bed, then suddenly realised that I'd heard people talking about the clocks changing this weekend! I tried to get on the Internet which didn't work, then tried the news channels, then rang reception. She said, oh yeah they go forward an hour, thanks for reminding me...

Can't believe this!!!!!!!! Less than 3 hours sleep we'll have! Then we didn't know what the phone alarm was going to do i.e. whether it would change the time automatically and the alarm would go off at the right time. So we set that and then set the room alarm clock as a back up.

Good night!!!!!!