Eating and travelling was on the cards today. We first shed more passengers in LA - bye Helen and Justin - in the early hours. A breakfast at Denny's (think Little Chef), followed by lots of rounds of the name game (a was Tyra Banks - tough) saw us to San Francisco via a place famous for its split pea soup. Finally we were back at the Green Tortoise Hostel where I would spend a lot of my time dealing with photos. But first Marion, Noemie, Nicholas and I had a fin...

I got to Hollywood with Sarah and went off to Banana Bungalow while looking at all the names on Hollywood Boulevard. It certainly does distract you from carrying two rucksacks a mile down the road! I had time to drop my bags and get picked up by Angie - a travel friend I met in Poland a couple of years ago - to go to Universal City for iFly freefall and food. It was great to see Angie and her new husband again and it was fun to hang out. It was so lucky that Angi...

I'm on a bus to Los Angeles following a great trip with Green Tortoise to Yosemite National Park. Two full days of enjoying the beauty of this vast granite valley and a bunch of new friends to boot, almost all of whose names I can't begin to remember... Green Tortoise is a bus company that takes you on tours of America, favouring natural beauty over city life, and everyone mucks in to help with cooking, washing and cleaning. The bus runs overnight while the pass...

Brace yourself. This is going to take a LONG time. San Francisco is the city on my world trip where I spent the most time, partly through choice and partly through necessity. There was a horrible lull in the middle but the rest was pretty cool. So it turns out that Mark MacDonald (producer, Midsummer Night's Dream, York Uni) lives in San Francisco and it was his birthday on the 25th when I arrived late in the evening. I joined him quite far into the night and go...