All stared well when we got on the unheard of Air New Zealand plane and realised we had picked well… two 'love' seats at the back, unlimited movies, a touch screen to order your wines, to browse menus, and every US Sitcom you can think of. Needless to say we stayed awake the whole flight, and didn't realise until after the 3 hours at customs, that we had been awake 24 hours. So picking our mustang from the car hire company was relatively quick, we settled on yellow, and off we headed to a lovely smelly motel at Long Beach - Super 8.

After a well deserved sleep we finally started our road trip down the coast, passing OC highlights such as the beautiful Laguna Beach (although we failed to stop..still a sore point). We arrived in San Diego our first stop just after lunch and checked in to the super funky Pearl motel on the highway, and met cosmo our pet fish in our very quirky room. Not realising this would be the only sunny day in San Diego we wandered around the city, covering Westfield, Gaslamp quarter, chilled out in beautiful Balboa park (a true haven in the city) and did a beer tasting in Little Italy. We then eat our first proper meal of the trip in Crafty Commerce a very atmospheric, vibey restaurant, all wooden, with amazing cocktails. We shared a very tasty burger, and mac n cheese, proper American style! From here on in San Diego was covered in a thick layer of grey cloud, regardless we headed to the beaches - pacific and mission - as it was too cold to go swimming we settled on breakfast inside, with views of the grey beach. We ate at World famous - our advice had been have 2 meals a day only in the US to save coming back twice the size, so this was meal 1 - a big rich creamy crab omelette, with a side of hash browns and toast! Will had his much thought of Breakfast Burrito - yum! We were now ready for surfing on any other adventure but realised it was still cold - after wandering on the pier, we headed to La Jolla - San Diegos answer to Beverly Hills. Have to say was a little disappointed, but needless to say saw lots of seals, and pelicans, and met a women who spoke a lot. The fave beach of all of them though had to be Ocean Beach - aka the hippy beach. We hit it at the right time, as there was an amazing local market on, with cute gifts, and the best sweetcorn ever covered in lime, spices and cheese… after enjoying our snacks on the beach off we headed to our hotel to get into the Halloween spirit by watching the Rocky Horror Show by the pool, with a bottle of red. Very entertaining. The rest of our time in SD was spent at Musuems in Balboa, and exploring the sereal Coronado island. And then we decided it was time to warm up and jumped on the freeway to sunny Palm Springs…