We are in San Diego (whale's vagina to those in the know), staying in the Ocean Beach International Hostel. Its a dump. Dont EVER stay here. But ocean beach is awesome, just a small beach town, huge waves, full of hippies, surfers, tramps, and general weirdos, but we came for the beach and thats all good! We travelled here from San Francisco with outrageous hangovers, courtesy of Ian and his Irish car bombs (drop a shot of jamesons and baileys into a guiness and...

ROADTRIP Thanks to my awesome cousin Stuart 'STUHAST' Hartley, we decided we could afford to rent a car for a week as through his California-mafia connections he managed to get the under-25 surcharge waived, so it was just about do-able. The night before we had a cool evening watching Anchorman, drinking 40s and hanging out with my 'cuz' - just like old times it was great. In our supercharged amazingly high speed Kia Spectra EX (worst car ever; fact) we set of...

On friday we travelled by car, bus, train, bus, and one more bus for 8 hours in order to get to Yosemite National Park. It was 100% worth it. Rather stupidly, we only tried to reserve a camping pitch the day before, and as it was a nice weekend we were told there was nothing available, but we went anyway with the belief that it wold be easy to find a spot when we got there. There wasnt, only irritatingly smug 'camp full' signs. Our only hope rather than have to...

We have just had the poshest meal at the most amazing luxurious golf club in the most ridiculously plush area of houses. Never fear - we didnt decide to blow all of our travel fund on fine dining and expensive hotels, but have been staying at Casa Hartley in Santa Rosa, an enormous house with swimming pool, hot tub, several acres of fruit trees and the biggest and most luxurious room we will stay in for our entire trip without a doubt! We were entertained at a ve...

Friday night we drove the four hours from San Francisco to South Lake Tahoe just over the stateline between California and Nevada (driven by my cousin - first driving practice is later today in Matt's aunties enourmous truck!) We arrived just before midnight with Ian, Sunny, John, Stu, Sharona, Stephanie (who we are endlessly grateful to as she allowed us to stay in her luxurious cabin for the weekend), Pardis, Carly and Joe; ten people + beer + gambling = one ...