Right, for our last blog while we are on our travels. It's been an amazing roller coaster of 14 months - highs and lows and now we are in our very last week in LA and of our travels. The week started with all of us sick....which hampered our plans a little. None of us had any motivation to do anything! Poor Ryan had to put up with all of us in a grumpy mood. Nick did manage to round up some energy and visited Newport Beach with Ryan where they played beach Am...

Our third week in California marked a visit to Walnut Creek, Sarah & Rey's old stomping ground. After dropping Sarah off for work we headed to Berkeley where we wandered around the University of California like we were students, it was freshers week so we had loads of people trying to coerce us into social clubs etc. (made us feel young!) We did some shopping in Berkeley before doing some more in Walnut Creek. (We last visited Walnut Creek 6 years ago!!!! Whe...

To kickstart our second week in Irvine, we hit the outlets and left with literally hundreds of bags of bargains! Helen was overjoyed as her new handbags had been reduced by at least 40%...investment for the future right? The night before Rey's parents, aunt and uncle were due to return to San Jose we headed out to a Brazilian restaurant which was an awesome experience in itself. You get given a card which was red and green on each side - green means keep it com...

We were welcomed to Los Angeles for a second time by Rey and Sophie (the dog!) and when we arrived at Sarah and Rey's house we were so glad to be sleeping on a proper bed that evening! LA is to be our home for the next 4 weeks! Number one on our list of things to do was RELAX, so thats what we did on our first day. Sarah arrived that evening from San Fran and we all went for some Dairy Queen! How American! :) We soon realised that Helen's engagement ring was ...

Our welcome to Los Angeles was a huge queue in immigration and a welcome hug from Nicks sister Sarah. The day was spent catching up with Sarah, napping to avoid jet lag and eating Rey's speciality - Chicken Adobo. Yum yum! The evening was spent catching up, talking about weddings and our travels to date! As we were going to bed, we received a lovely present from mother nature - a massive 4.6 earthquake! This was the first ever earthquake we have felt, the entire...