On our last day in San Luis Obispo we watched the latest Harry Potter film, before heading down to the weekly Farmers Market to gorge on hot corn on the cob with butter and paprika, fresh strawberries, malted ice cream and Cornish pasties (the sellers of the latter advised us, rather unnecessarily, that they were an English invention pronounced 'pas-tee'). If we'd had the room we could have had barbecued meat, tacos, churros, smoothies, cookies and locally made c...

Alcatraz was brilliant. I usually think audio tours are a bit naff and end up fast forwarding whole sections but the self-guided tour at Alcatraz is really interesting. It takes you round the old prison cells and shows you the exact cell where guards were held hostage in a foiled escape attempt; the pock marks where grenades fired by the USA military scarred the floor; the kitchen where the outlines of the knives are still drawn onto the wall so that you could im...

San Francisco is making us feel a bit homesick. The skies are grey and it's a lot colder than the other places we've been to in California; Fisherman's Wharf is like an English seaside resort with tonnes of tacky attractions and amusements; and today we stumbled across a shop selling British food - Galaxy chocolate, Heinz beans, Digestive biscuits, decent bacon etc etc. We spent ages walking round stroking packets of basic food items just because they reminded us...

We checked out of our San Diego hotel on the 25th and caught an early Greyhound bus. We were meant to arrive in Merced at 6pm but unfortunately our bus was older than the hills and we'd gone barely 20 miles when it collapsed, wheezing, on the side of the freeway and point blank refused to move. Apparently the brakes had failed(!), which explained the horrible burning smell. It took just four minutes for a fire truck to arrive but four hours for a replacement bus ...

Jak here...my turn to write (or attempt) a blog entry. Got the Amtrak train the other day from Anaheim to San Diego, a very packed train due to the horse racing at Del Mar and the Comic Con (a massive convention for comic book fans) being held in San Diego. We arrived at our hotel to find that they had not received our booking which led to a rather brief but otherwise worrying time until we eventually got a room. We headed out that evening for a bite and to find ...