Hey y'all!!!

That is the only American phrase i could think of as people just say hey like us ha! we finally made it to our last country, America!!! We were both very very excited to come here as it is a nice way to finish our trip. Now before we can start on LA i have to tell you about a little incident that happened on the plane on route to LA. Vicki was leaning against her seat trying to fit her passport into her pocket when all of a sudden there was a huge bang and she shot backwards into the face of the man behind her, which sent his cup of tea that he had on his table flying!! The two people sitting next to him screamed and then started holding the chair to stop it crushing him and vicki went bright red and just kept saying sorry!! I got a first hand view of all of this as i was stood waiting for the toilet, it was soooo funny!! I was even crying! She and the man behind her then had to be moved to the crews seats for landing as her chair was now a safety hazard!!!

So after our eventful journey we arrived in LAX airport which is the busiest airport we've ever seen, there were planes and people everywhere. It took us nearly an hour to get through customs and it was then my turn to be embarrased as when we were doing the security checks the lady said 'put your hand on the monitor sir' to me, i was not impressed!! Vicki thought it was hilarious ha! Next we had to find our hostel which was on Hollywood Boulevard. To get there we had to get the tube and make a few changes so it was a bit of a mission, we also went through the ghetto on the way and there were quite a few odd characters on the train. We just kept our heads down and waited till we were back to normality in the tourist areas. The hostel was easy enough to find as its right on the walk of fame, it couldn;t be a better location and the hostel itself was basic but ok and the manager was really nice and quite tight on security so we felt safe. We did however walk in to find Superman sat on the balcony arguing with someone over the phone over a court case...we then saw him an hour later out on the street taking pictures with all the kids, bit of a contrast! So yes we were living with superman along with quite a few other aspiring musicians, actors and comedians and there were also a few other travellers like us.

so on our first day we did all the hollywood sights including the open top bus tour of the Hollywood celeb homes which was really cool, there were loads but some of the most memorable were michael jackson, christina aguilera (she painted her house pink!), tom cruise, phil collins and Alicia keys! Its also weird that they are all neighbours to each other. So after a good day of sightseeing, richard the manager of our hostel invited us for a drink with him which ended up in us drinking a whole bottle of rum with him in the office, we then decided it was time for him to sample some english alcohol and so we moved onto cider and finally beer! So as you can imagine it was quite a messy evening but very funny =)

The next day we both had slightly fuzzy heads so we had a lazy day. We did decide to get the bus to santa monica to check out the beach, taking the bus was not the best decision as LA is huge and the traffic is awful so our round trip was about 5 hours on the bus!!! We only saw the beach for about half an hour and then we had to get bak on the bus to be home before it got dark...so it was an eventful day but we now know not to ride the bus and stick to the tube and walking! The day ended well though as Richard cooked us his speciality 'fried chicken' with mac n cheese, corn and gravy which was amazing!

So that sums up our first stop off in LA, we will be returning again and next time will be heading to Santa Monica to properly enjoy the beaches hehe. Next stop was San Francisco, which was a 7 hour journey on the megabus. The megabus actually suprised us and was very efficient and not too scary so we arrived safely. We did have some trouble getting of the tiny tram bus as we had our huge bags and there was a group of 10 asian people standing in the bus who didnt move when we tried to get off, so we kept having to shout at the driver not to pull away as we were still trying to get off...it was stressful but very funny after we got off!

Our first day we spent wandering and climbing the enormous hills, we went to fishermans wharf to check out all the piers and the street performers which was cool. We also attempted to buy Alcatraz tickets for the following day and were shocked to find it was sold out completely until the end of august!!! clearly we missed the memo!! However we kept researching when we got home, thank god for the internet...and managed to find out about the secret 150 tickets that are available every day provided you are willing to get up at 5am to queue for them! As Alcatraz was the main thing we wanted to see here we deiced to bite the bullet and got up at 4am to walk to the pier and queue. We recruited a german guy from our hostel who also wanted to come and together we were 25th in the queue and after a two hour wait we managed to get tickets for the first boat out yay! so getting up early was well worth it and we had a good day exploring alcatraz!! The next day we were busy again as we decided to rent a bike to bike the golden gate bridge! we went on a 10 mile ride which basically takes you along the waterfront and then up onto the bridge where you can then ride across which was really cool. However we thought it would be fun to rent a tandem bike...we quickly realised this was a bad decision as it was sooooo hard to get up the hills, we had to push it so many times and vicki had to stay on the fron t as i was scared to ride because the bike was so wobbly!! I think we should leave the tandem bikes for the parents and kids, it doesnt work too well with two adults ha!

So that pretty much sums up San Francisco, aside from that we spent alot of time browsing the shops. We also found a really cool latino restaurant and had an amazing dinner there one night. San Francisco, despite the very cold weather which is bizarre considering how hot the rest of California is, is a very cool city, there are lots of characters here and the parallel roads make it easy to walk around which is nice (once you learn to avoid the hills and walk around the outside). Having said that we are ready to get back to the sunshine and we are getting very very excited for Las Vegas which is only days away now, we feel like little kids going to disneyland hehe.

We will be in touch from Las Vegas which will probably be our last blog post...i cant believe it!! It will be weird not writing about every day of our lives ha! As after Vegas its just four days till we are home and can bore you endlessly which all of our stories hehe

speak soon, lots of love xxxxxxxxxxx