Before we tell you of our tales in San Diego, we must skip back a step or two and tell you about our Greyhound trip to Anaheim! It's quite unbelievable really that we left out the story last time, especially due the the tragic event of loosing our corkscrew!!

Travelling from Santa Barbara to Anaheim required a transfer at Los Angeles, a station that we have become quite familiar with now! But as we departed from the bus to move through to the connections door, we find ourselves in front of newly installed x-ray machines for all of the luggage. Obligingly, we place our bags onto the conveyer and walk to the other end ready to collect them. Ollie's was first through, and got stopped straight away. "Have you got a knife in there Sir?", "Er no, well yes, just a camping knife!", "ya'll have to remove that!".

With that, Sasha's bag comes through and was followed with the question "Are you together? Do you have a knife too?", "Yes I do, the same camping one".

So Sasha and Ollie scramble through their bags in search of their cuttlery to show the guard, each pulling out their fold away knife, fork and spoon. After much examination, and a "these are pretty neat" from the guard, he decided that the knife and fork were far too dangerous to take on board the bus. "What about this" declares Sasha, holding up the metal corkscrew, "Oh definitely", replies the guard unfolding the corkscrew, "this could do a lot of harm." showing us a corkscrew stabbing motion! (a very slow, painful death with maybe a promise of not to move by the stabee)

With that, Sasha and Ollie zip back up their bags with a final question, "So we can keep the spoons?", "Yeah, you can keep the spoons!" he replies as he continues to fold and unfold our "neat" cuttlery with a pleased grin.

Laughing the incident off in the waiting room, especially at the fact that we could easily have gotten away with just loosing the knife and fork, if Sasha hadn't piped up to be oh so very helpful, Sasha suddenly remembers that she has also got a very sharp pair of hair dresser scissors in her bag, not to mention the razors and razor blades!! Oh well, that was a close shave . . . .

Arriving in Anaheim we obviously had to seek out a shop to replace the corkscrew! We could easily live on soup, but no corkscrew to open the wine could be catastrophic! Thankfully a local liquor store kindly fleeced us out of an extortionate amout of money for a new one.

Days later as we packed everything up to move onto San Diego we had the delight of coming across not only a swiss army style mutli-tool which includes a knife, but also another corkscrew that we had packed!!! Oh well, we are back to having two now!

. . . anyway, back to more recent events . . .

Arriving in San Diego we jump on a bus to take us to Pacific Beach, and the worst hostel that we have stayed in so far! At first glances, not only does it look run down, it looks in some places that it could fall down! Finding our way into the hostel, we find that it is full of teenagers gathered around a courtyard singing at the top of their voices to the radio. We feel old! We check in, and are shown to our room that we will be sharing with 14 people in total, with one toilet and one shower.

We found our sanctuary whilst staying at Pacific beach in a sports bar called Miller's on the Field. Here, during happy hour they serve 800ml jars of beer for $5.00, and half price food, and so we found ourselves regularly stocking up on liquid assistance to help us sleep!

The first morning we awoke to the melody of farting! Both of us being on top bunks opposite each other had two blokes who had obviously enjoyed a fair few beers the night before! And it would appear that it didn't agree with their stomaches! The first couple of farts were mildly amusing, but then, as we all know, heat rises!! The air around our heads soon turned putrid, and almost unbearable! Thankfully, they both packed up and left to head to Mexico before the suffocation kicked in! Poor Mexico!!

We were incredibly lucky with our weather whilst in Pacific Beach, with the temperatures hitting between 25 - 31'C everyday, which gave us ample opportunity to top up our tans, and enjoy the beaches.

Managing to endure the 5 nights at Banana Bungalows, it came time for us to move to another hostel-come-hotel in Downtown. And oh what a relief it was to have our own room, and be able to sleep at night.

Unfortunately the rain soon started to hit California, with northern most California being the worst affected, however it meant that the first few days in San Diego downtown were a little bit drizzly. This didn't however stop us from taking in the sight of Seaport village, the gaslamp area and Balboa Park.

We aso visited a lovely little area in San Diego called Little Italy. We visited on the day that the towns farmers market was being hosted with much excitement and anticipation on what delights we could acquire for lunch. The market itself was reasonable, but not as good as those we have visited elsewhere, and so we headed to the cafes and restaurants to peruse their menus. After an hour of checking them all out, we decided on a cafe selling freshly made italian subs. Sasha went for a delicious Salami sandwich with all the trimmings, and Ollie opted for a sandwich called Hot Capocolla, described as having melting capocolla, hot pickles and all the trimmings. Looking forward to a spicy melted cheese sandwich, to move away from him having to eat meat each day, Ollie soon discovered that Capocolla is an Italian cured pork!! Oh well, that's another meat to add to his new repertoire of discovery!!

A trip to a shop called CVS (ironically a pharmacy that sells the largest variety of alcohol and biggest bottles we've seen) to buy Santa hats provided us with much amusement when we made it to the till. Buying some wine as well, we went through the normal routine of supplying the young male shop assistant with our ID. Noting that we were from the UK he excitedly started to tell us all about a friend that he has who lives in Halifax, who years ago had come to visit the US, which is when they had met. He proceeded to imitate how his Halifax friend had tried to do a Californian accent, with all the cliche "Dudes", and "Surf's up", he then giggled and declared, "Oh my god, he was so horny!", we giggled along with him, for very different reasons, as it appears horny means something a little different here!

After that the rain really did start to hit San Diego, with flooding and mudslides being reported outside of the city, and storms across the north of California bringing in unprecidented amounts of snow.

In one small break of rain, we decided to brave it to the shore line to watch the Holiday Light Parade. Billed as being hundreds of boats covered in Christmas lights sailing up and around the port. Arriving a 15 mins or so late, donning our Santa hats to get us into the spirit of the season, we find that few people had braved the drizzle to line the port, and only three boats were visible. Realising that we had missed the big display, including the fireworks (surely we should have least have heard them?), we head on back to the hotel, returning somewhat damp and bedraggled we turn on the news, only to find that the whole event had been cancelled!!! Whoop flipping do!

And so, as Miller's was our sanctuary in Pacific beach, so too was the Karl Strauss Brewery and Restaurant in downtown. They not only served their own perfectly brewed beers for the silly low price of $3.50 at happy hour, they served half priced appetizers that easily fed the two of us!

And so we know find ourselves in Las Vegas and will shortly update you on not only our adventure of getting here but how we spent Christmas!